Saturday, September 20, 1997

Last week of trail crew. Four of us all summer, building a new bike trail down the back side. Pick, shovel, rock bar, the rake-and-hoe thing called a McLeod. Switchbacks, water bars, rock steps. I'm in better shape than the summer I was eighteen and bucked hay for the neighbors.

The aspens went gold this week. Gold all up the valley in bands where the groves are. Then the wind takes them and it's over.

Shannon and I are going out, if you're wondering. Mom is wondering. Mom has asked in four letters.

Patrol starts again in November and I'm not a rookie anymore. Bought new boots that fit. The wheat from the coffee can is growing in a pot on Shannon's windowsill. It came up like grass. She's very proud of it.

Saturday, July 5, 1997

Wrote this in a notebook at the farm. Typing it up now.

Home ten days for harvest. Craig said he could use a truck driver, which he's said every summer since I left, but this year I came.

Western Kansas in July: the wheat gold and dry, and the country so flat you can watch weather coming for an hour before it gets there. Dad's 65 and still runs the combine himself. Craig runs the other one. A custom crew came up from Oklahoma for the big north field like every year. I drove the grain truck from the field to the elevator in town and back, sixteen hours a day, windows down, the farm report on the radio.

Prices aren't good. Dad doesn't say much about it. Craig says more.

Nights we sat on the porch. Dad asked about patrol. I told him about the sleds and the control work and sweep. He listened all the way through. Then he said, "So you're the one makes sure nobody's left out there." I said yes. He said, "That's a good job," and went to bed.

I came close to crying on my parents' porch at thirty years old, which is not something Jonsons do.

Shannon sent a postcard with a moose on it. On the back it says, Wish you were here. Actually, wish I was there. Bring me some wheat. So I did. Half a coffee can of it from the last load.

Sunday, April 13, 1997

Closing day. The pond skim at the bottom of Tailings: people in costumes trying to ski across forty feet of ice water. A man dressed as a hot dog made it all the way. A girl dressed as a bride didn't.

Rookie season, final count: 103 days on the hill, 34 sleds, and one lady with a nosebleed that Huntley still says counts.

Gilley, the patrol director, called me into his office after sweep and said I could come back next year. He said it like he was reading the lift schedule. I said thank you like I was hearing it. Then I went out and sat on the bench by the door for a while.

This summer I'm on trail crew. The mountain runs one lift in the summer for hikers and bikers, and somebody has to build trail and fix what the snowmelt wrecks. Shannon's running the summer lift. I asked her if she wanted to get supper sometime when we're on the same schedule. She said she'd been waiting since February for me to say so and was about to start charging rent.

Sunday, March 9, 1997

Spring skiing. Ice in the morning, corn snow in the afternoon, sunburn in between. Patrol wears sunscreen like war paint.

I want to write about sweep again because it's still my favorite thing.

At 3:30 the lifts stop loading. At the top we split up, each of us takes a run or two, and we wait till the last chair goes over the top and the lifties call it. Then we go. You ski slow. You stop at the edge of the trees and look. You call "Ski patrol, sweeping" even when there's nobody to hear it. If somebody's sitting down, you stop and ask. Usually they're just tired. Sometimes they're more than tired.

Today I had Lode and the trees beside it. Shannon closed Number 4 and rode down on the last chair, which lifties don't usually do, and was waiting at the bottom of Lode with her hood down. She skis better than me. We skied the last pitch together, slow, me looking in the trees and her looking at me.

"You really look in every one," she said.

I said that's the job.

She said she'd watched patrol sweep for three years and figured most of them were just skiing.

Dispatch said copy. The mountain was empty and it was just us and the snowcats starting up.

Monday, February 10, 1997

There's a lifty at the top of Number 4 named Shannon Wilmore. She's from Wisconsin. She has run that lift in every kind of weather since I got here, and I have never once seen her ramp unshoveled.

Today it was blowing forty at the top and the lift was on wind hold for an hour. I was stuck in our shack and she was stuck in the lift shack across the way, and around ten she came over with two cups of coffee and her hood up and said, "You looked lonesome."

I said I was fine.

She said, "That's what I said. Lonesome."

We drank the coffee. She told me about Wisconsin and her four brothers and the dairy farm she grew up on, and I told her about the wheat. Turns out we left home for the same reason, which is that somebody else was going to get the farm, and we were glad of it, and also not.

When the wind dropped and they started the lift she said, "See you at sweep," and went back across.

That's all that happened. I'm writing it down anyway.

Thursday, January 16, 1997

Big storm Tuesday and Wednesday. Twenty-six inches at the top.

This morning I went along on control for the first time. Not to do anything. To carry things and stay where I was put.

I'm not going to write about how it's done. The short version is that before the public is allowed on the steep slopes after a storm, the patrol goes out and makes sure any snow that's going to slide slides while nobody's on it. It starts in the dark. We were on the lift at 6:30 with headlamps, and the lift kid had to brush the snow off every chair before we sat down.

I've lived thirty years under big skies and never saw one like the sky over the ridge at seven this morning. Pink, then gold, then the hard blue you only get above eleven thousand feet. Down in the parking lot people get out of their cars when they hear the booms and look up.

One slope we watched let go and ran a couple hundred yards into the gully. It made a sound like somebody letting out a long breath. Then it was quiet, and the slope was safe, and two hours later there were kids from Texas making turns on it who'll never know.

Eighteen below at the shack at 7:30.

I keep thinking it's like the wheat. You do the work early, before anybody's watching, so that later nothing happens.

Wednesday, December 25, 1996

Christmas. More people on the hill than I've ever seen in one place outside the state fair.

Eleven sleds for the patrol before noon. Mostly knees and wrists. A kid who hit a tree at low speed and was mostly mad about his goggles. A snowboarder with a shoulder. I don't want to give the wrong idea. Most of the day is standing at the top in the wind saying "slow down" to people who don't.

Called home on my break from the pay phone by the rental shop. Everybody was at Craig and Pam's and they passed the phone around the table. Katherine is five and wanted to know if I'd seen Santa on a ski lift. I said yes and that he was going too fast. Maxwell is two and just breathed into the phone.

Dad got on last. He doesn't talk on the phone. He said the wheat looks good under the snow. Snow on winter wheat is a blanket; it keeps it from freezing out. He said, "You got snow there?" I said about forty inches at the top. There was a long pause. Then he said, "Well, that's a lot of snow." That's my father saying merry Christmas, I'm proud of you and come home, all at once.

Mom got back on and said she keeps these pages in a folder. She says I write like my father talks. I'm not sure that's a compliment.

Sunday, December 8, 1996

First real sled today.

A woman from Oklahoma caught an edge on Tailings and her knee went the wrong way. You can usually tell a knee from up the hill. People hold it with both hands and won't let go.

Huntley let me do the whole thing and kept his mouth shut, which I know was hard for him. I checked her over, splinted the leg, and we got her into the sled and wrapped her in blankets until all you could see was her face and her hat. Huntley took the tail rope. I took the handles.

A loaded sled on a steep pitch wants to get down the hill faster than you do. You keep your skis in a wedge, your weight back and your hands low, and you go slow, and the man on the tail rope keeps it from running away from you. On the flats you pull it like a mule. Halfway down she asked if I'd done this before. I said yes. Huntley laughed so hard behind me I felt it through the rope.

In the first aid room at the bottom she held my hand and said thank you. Then her husband came in with their kids and I went back up.

I shook for about an hour. Nobody could tell, because of the cold. That's one good thing about the cold.

The library man showed me how to put a counter on the page. It says 11. I think nine of those are me.

Thursday, November 28, 1996

Thanksgiving. Worked. Turkey sandwiches in the top shack out of a cooler somebody's wife packed.

Called home from the pay phone at the base. Craig answered. Eighteen at the table this year. Dad got on and asked about the snow. In Kansas it's always rain he's asking about. Out here I'm the one asking about snow. Same worry, different crop.

Friday, November 22, 1996

Opened today. Two lifts, four runs, all man-made snow, hard as a parking lot by noon.

I rode first chair at 7:40 with Wayne Huntley, who's been on patrol here eleven years and has been assigned to keep me from embarrassing the jacket. We checked the runs, put up rope and bamboo where it was thin, and wrote the snow report on the board at the top. Then the public came.

Questions I was asked today, most to least:

1. Where's the bathroom.
2. Which way is the lodge.
3. Is it going to snow.
4. Are you a real doctor.

I said no to the last one. Huntley says I should say "close enough," because it calms people down. I'm not going to.

No sleds. One lady with a bloody nose from her own ski pole, which I fixed with gauze and a few minutes of standing still. Huntley says that counts as my first patient. I don't think it does.

At 3:45 we swept. That's the last run of the day. Patrol starts at the top of every run behind the last skiers and comes down slow, looking into the trees and calling out, making sure nobody's left on the mountain when the lifts stop. It's already the part of the job I like best. The mountain empties out behind you. It gets quiet. You're the last one down.

At the bottom the lifties were tying off the chairs and the sun was off everything but the very top. Huntley radioed that Lode was swept, dispatch said copy, and that was the day.

Saturday, November 16, 1996

My name is Israel Jonson. I'm thirty. I grew up on a wheat farm in western Kansas and ran ambulance for the county for five years, and this fall I got hired on the ski patrol at Bristlecone, which is a mid-size mountain in Colorado you've never heard of unless you live within three hours of it.

The library down valley has two computers on the Internet and a sign-up sheet. The librarian says anybody can have a home page now, free, and she showed me how. So this is mine. Mostly it's so my mother can see I'm alive without me calling long distance. My brother Craig's wife Pam has America Online and says she'll print it out and take it over to the folks' house.

Hi Mom.

This week was refresher. All of patrol, new and old, in the lodge at the base, going over first aid, CPR, radios, sleds. I've done CPR on real people. It's still strange doing it on a plastic man on a carpet with thirty people watching.

We open Friday if the snowmaking holds. They run the guns all night on the lower runs. You lie in bed and hear them, like a wind that doesn't quit.

Eight dollars an hour. A free pass. A red jacket with a white cross on the back and blue across the shoulders. I've never been happier with a worse deal.