In Which I Use a Funeral as an Excuse for a Ski Trip

Tyler and I drive the empty roads across southeast Idaho. We've done this drive probably a dozen times but these are unusual circumstances. The normally sagebrush-gray landscape is softened by snow. The expansive lava formations of Craters of the Moon look less like a suburb of Mordor than usual. Unless it snows in Mordor, I guess.

We enter a thick fog in the Wood River Valley that turns to precipitation as we near Ketchum. There's a lot of snow hemming in the narrow streets. North of town we locate the grand vacation home of Tyler's brother's friend. This is the new base of operations, since Tyler's grandparents' home (which he calls the Palace) is no longer available. 

Thanks to the Mountain Collective pass, i.e. the best deal in the West, a couple days at Sun Valley costs zero dollars instead of hundreds, so we go skiing. Warm snow falls and the visibility is soupy. Tyler says this is completely unlike Sun Valley, land of sunshine, groomed runs, and no snow. 

We retire for burritos, beer, and a scenic hot tub buttressed by snow banks. Sophie chases snowballs across the yard. 

Thursday is a stunning bluebird powder day so we ski the resort again, where the tree glades, of perfect density and gradient, are almost untouched. It is very enjoyable until I exit onto a cat track at high speed and slam knee to mouth. No teeth are knocked out, just duck lips and abrasions. I quit. 

Turns out Sun Valley is a fun resort when it snows

We're back at the house on schedule. The rest of Tyler's little clan has arrived: his two brothers, his mom, and her boyfriend. Everyone dons Nice Clothes and we go to the Episcopalian church for the memorial service for Tyler's grandfather. I see other attendants' grief and tear up thinking abstractly about losing a parent or grandparent. My brain shies away from specifics because I don't to want sob audibly at the funeral of a man I barely knew. Afterwards I flit around the reception eating cured meat and trying to avoid talking to relatives I don't know. 

Our crew retreats to the house to debrief on all the politics and power plays happening. I feel grateful for the simplicity of my family. 

Just another beautiful day in big mountains

Tyler, Ben, and I have a window the next morning to go for a backcountry tour before the interment of Charles's ashes. After studying some topo maps we have a potential objective, but driving down the canyon yields disappointing options, so on the way back we pick a National Forest access point at random and are greatly rewarded with an easy climb in the sunshine and pristine powder through perfect trees on the descent. This never happens. 

We go to the cemetery. The priest extols the beauty of our surroundings and I warm inside, but it is hard to the reconcile the sweet sadness of the ceremony with the uneven family dynamics, the permanency of death, the shadow cast by money.

My loves on the summit 

Tyler and I drive to Boise the next day but not before a repeat of the successful tour, to tire the dog out and get another taste of powder. 

We have dinner with some of Tyler's oldest friends, kind and funny and charismatic and fiercely loyal to him. The intensity and longevity of Tyler's friendships, I think, are a testament to his character. 

On Sunday a bunch of us ski the local hill, Bogus Basin. Boise down low is shrouded in a chilly gray but the road to the resort climbs out of the haze into bright sunshine. The group splinters because of different ability levels (or one could say lifestyle choices: occasional skiers vs. habitual snow sliders) but we regroup regularly for beer and pictures. 

The gang and me at Bogus

Too soon we have to say goodbye and drive the long interstate back to the Tetons. Temperature variations cause impenetrable fog and we're both tense, half-listening to Serial while peering into the abyss. 

It is bitter cold and clear in the Valley. We try to organize the detritus of our trip and then pass out. Today it is back to work, back to real life, back to a place where everyone counts their wealth not in dollars, but in days spent outside. 

Vignettes

Cool things have happened but while I had a half-written blog post for each floating around in my head, time passed and my thoughts dissipated into the ether. So instead, the past month, fast and dirty:

Beer paired dinner
Pic courtesy of Katie

After our incandescent experience last year, and with everyone's cellar close to overflowing with sexy beers, some of the brewery staff and various significant others decided to have our own beer paired dinner. We each brought a course and several exciting beers to consume in the best possible company. The fact that I can recall each course a month later speaks to the fineness of the meal.

Appetizers were bruschetta with chevre, sage, and balsamic-reduced onions with a rich "triple Tripel", and rare elk backstrap in a summer roll presentation with an herbaceous pale ale. Next was grilled peach, almond, and peppery arugula salad with a piquant selection of wild sours. Then over-the-top potatoes au gratin, the smoky bacon enhanced by a smooth porter on nitro. The main course was short rib sliders on a parsnip puree with extra horseradish, paired with a couple big brassy barleywines. We retired to the garage for a while to play ping-pong, let dinner rest, and drink lighter fare: week-old IPAs from one of the best breweries in the country, some delicate Berliner weisse, some easy-drinking pilsners. Dessert was salted caramel brownies with ice cream and the big guns came out to play: the bourbon barrel-aged quads, barleywines, and porters with their individual boxes and heady backstories. Dinner lasted a languid six hours, and we lined up thirty dead soldiers to photograph; hundreds of dollars worth of beer and a priceless experience.

The folks, doing the only touristy thing I permitted
Pic courtesy of Debs

I had been looking forward to my parents' visit for a very long time and it did not disappoint. As I'd hoped, they drove through Jackson from the airport, and having seen the kitsch shops and faux old-timey wooden sidewalks, did not require me to waddle around all the crowded hotspots with them. Instead of being tourists, they just fell easily into my routine: lots of reading, mountain biking, taking my spoiled little dog on runs, cooking great dinners, hanging out at the pub. We had some uncharacteristically late boozy nights talking about beer and life and real estate. Debbie was every bit the financial advisor/fount of wisdom I needed her to be, and Bill provided running commentary on, you know, everything. They met most of the really important people in my life and came away (I assume) with a much better understanding of why I can't pry myself away from the middle of nowhere Idaho.

Attempting to charge
Pic courtesy of Grand Targhee

Instead of racing Pierre's Hole again, I turned my sights on another Targhee race I knew would be less well-attended and that offered an obscene pay-out. It was a 25 mile XC and a long DH and the combined best placing on the same bike won the overall. I felt pretty good about that. Bill decided to race the XC too, to my delight, and finished strong, an impressive feat on a tough, high-altitude course, on an unfamiliar bike, after an extremely stressful summer. My fields were small and a little short on competition but I did spend the first half of the XC duking it out with a couple ladies. During the DH I had little confidence in a win after my humbling enduro experience but had a clean, fastish run and got to stand on top of the box for both races and the overall.

Teton Region High School MTB team (some of it, anyway)
Pic courtesy of Todd

Last weekend saw the first ever Idaho high school mountain bike race (hosted in Wyoming, ironically). The kids on our team are not only great riders, they're also some of the coolest, friendliest, most positive kids I've ever had the pleasure of hanging out with. We scored a good number of podiums, all from the middle-schoolers and underclassmen, which means the team is only going to get stronger. Almost two hundred kids participated and the atmosphere was full of infectious stoke. I was really happy to be a part of it. 

Now it's forty degrees and raining, with all reports indicating snow on the peaks. I am more than happy to put a great summer to rest and sally forth into winter.

Dad

A lot of women sense themselves turning into their mothers, experiencing that amused wince when a phrase escapes their lips and directly evokes mom. I more often find myself acting out Billisms, sometimes with delight and sometimes chagrin. The other day I was extolling to Tyler the virtues of our new barmaker (finally!), raving about her efficiency and attention to detail and that specific sort of intelligence that fits the job so well. Without looking up from his magazine he said, "It's like I'm listening to Bill talk."

My parents impressed upon me very salient lessons about quality of life, about worshiping at the altar of nature, about generosity of spirit and living with passion. They've never pressured me with bloated expectations of A Good Education, A Real Job, Grandchildren. When Bill and I used to go on our weekly long runs in the muggy rainforest of Pisgah, we'd end by soaking in a creek, him with a beer cracked, me perched on a rock because my body temperature had already plummeted. That's when we'd talk about everything and the subject of happiness came up often; he let me know they respected me for living in joy and contentment.

Bill was creating me in the image of himself very early on, giving me mountain bike lessons with utmost patience, bringing me to trail work days and participating as a mentor in youth sports (both of which I can do now in the Valley; trail work days happen all the time and the Tetons now have a high school mountain bike team). He taught me to never settle for a long bullshit commute to work, to listen to podcast compulsively (I've finally figured out how to stay informed on current events! And yes, Emily Bazelon is great.), to obsess over fine food and drink, how to work your ass off for no greater reward than personal fulfillment. In the year and a half at my job, I've battled small flare-ups of carpal tunnel syndrome, eczema, and plantar fasciitis. I found methods to beat each issue but it gave me new respect for (and incredulity of) his lifetime of manual labor.

I went through a pretty monstrous phase when I was younger. Bill sat me down once and told me what empathy was, and how it enables us to function as decent human beings in this world. I went on my wretched way but that conversation stuck with me and when I outgrew terrible tweendom, I embraced it and tried to exhibit empathy as much as possible.

Bill, I cannot adequately express your influence on me. Happy Father's Day.

Mom

In our family the kids are sort of off the hook for Mother's Day (although Bill still takes good care of her; she got a dropper post for her mountain bike this year). Debbie doesn't expect cliche cards and flowers and while a Sunday phone call is appreciated, she is not the sort to slather on the maternal guilt if the call is tardy or truncated. But I recently talked to her for half an hour about very pressing Grown Up Matters because I have been carrying around the idea of home ownership and worrying it into little pieces like Sophie does with her many bones and antlers. Debbie gave me some insight and a good dose of reality (for example, it is unreasonable to even consider houses over $200k).

Talking through Grown Up Matters with her is always helpful because she is already well-versed on all this stuff and has thoughtful answers; she is a smart and canny woman who is supportive but doesn't hand-hold. I was a little peeved as a teenager to have to pay for my own car insurance and gas while my moronic peers swanned around with their most recent Vera Bradley handbags, but I eventually figured out and appreciated Debbie's game plan. She nudged me and my sister towards financial responsibility and independence very early on but also arranged for us the precious gift of a debt-free college education. Now she helps me negotiate the waters of insurance, credit, and savings without ever entertaining the idea of a parental hand-out.

The folks are coming to visit around Labor Day. I've seen a lot of parents circulate through the Valley, but after a couple days' worth of majestic views and mellow footpaths, my friends get a little bug-eyed, knowing the only form of entertainment left is the clusterf*ck that is summer-time Jackson, where they listlessly browse all the turquoise and leather shops with their non-active families. They get envious and incredulous when I say my parents will be mountain biking together every day and drinking beer every night on the brewery lawn. "Even your mom??" Yep. She has only gotten more adventurous and badass with age.

So happy late Mother's Day, Debbie. Keep on reading voraciously, planning incredible trips to Europe, falling asleep during movies, "liking" posts on Facebook, and shocking employees with your foul mouth. Love you!

Thus Spoke Baker Bill

My father sent me a terribly endearing email that made mention of this here blog and I felt it would do the missive an injustice to simply leave it moldering in my inbox. Voila: 


I do continue to enjoy your blog posts although the alarming situations described have your mother and I welcoming the inevitable onset of warmer weather (and melting snow) in parts west.  That said, there seems to be another disquieting trend appearing in the blog entries that could well complicate your literary prospects.  I always suspected that following a requisite period of some sort of existential misery, you would emerge with a pithy but amusingly engaging memoir cataloging the indignities you had suffered.  Sort of Ben Folds meets Nanny Diaries.  The success of the publication would provide you and perhaps your parents with the financial windfall that we are probably entitled to.  Particularly after the movie rights sold.  Instead we are treated to this onslaught of in vita optimum so relentlessly that one feels the need for a firm tooth brushing after reading lest decay take hold.  Now don't get me wrong, I'm delighted that you are so piddling puppy happy, I just think it might require some recalibration to achieve the anticipated literary success.  So I'm thinking self help book.  By quantifying and formulating your happiness you could bring fulfillment and richness to lives otherwise untouched with the incandescent joy of Just Being Julia.  In addition to selling very well the whole experience of writing and marketing such a narrative would probably make you so miserable that you could then write a second and probably more entertaining book following the original formula outlined above.  Just saying.

Comings and Goings

So the folks came to town, and Tyler left town.

Tyler got a job at Grand Teton Brewing Company, the most ideal of situations but rather more abrupt than I'd hoped, so he packed up and hightailed it to Victor, ID. I have two months of his absence to contend with before I too make the trek. He is already in love with the place. 

Meanwhile Mom and Dad spent a week at camp and embraced wholeheartedly all the best parts. Faculty lectures, kayaking, wine on the deck at sunset, Bill merrily identifying each exciting new kind of flora and fauna he encountered, Deb announcing she wanted to hike Tallac ASAP and accomplishing the feat with aplomb. Their presence and bright-eyed enjoyment of this lovely little place renewed some of my own wonderment, in remission for the past months and slightly soured. It was great having them here, and when I left them to their own devices and they traipsed around seeking adventures and playing outside, it was quite apparent where I get it from.

Taking on Tallac