EVERYTHING ZEN

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING-2025

Morning in Jackson Hole. The kind of dry powder that gets into the binding mechanisms, into your boots, into the right part of your brain responsible for choosing the safest line.

Dropped into Corbet's in a pair of overalls and a hoodie because today was supposed to be on horseback but the snow report caused a detour. Borrowed boots and skis off a buddy who's 5'2 and hadn't actually agreed to lend them, he just happened to be there and I happened to need skis, so the negotiation was brief and one sided. Everything two sizes too small, edges catching at angles not meant for my stature. God, we were ripping it. Skied until my legs gave out the polite way, not the dramatic way. Just quietly stopped bargaining.

My buddy had a connection at Triangle X dude ranch over in Grand Teton, so the afternoon went from skis to saddles without time to sit and break the news to my quads. Same muscles, same cold, same clothes. I swung my legs over Luthor, the palomino. We rode out into the kind of landscape that makes you understand why people who live here get a little proprietary about it. Breath freezing in your throat before you could crack a joke.

Driving between the two, heater on full, or as full as I could manage given my coolant level, hands still numb enough that the steering wheel only existed when laying eyes on it, Blue Monday came on. Then later, Everything Zen. The Offspring, Bush, the works. The exact soundtrack of being six years old, gear soaked, getting dragged down to the basement of my parents' house after a day at Solitude Resort.

Flashback.

That basement was a dive bar in every measure apart from a liquor license. Boots and jackets dripping water in the mudroom. Adults louder and looser than they were anywhere else, replaying the day's runs like sports highlights, talking about lines and conditions and somebody's powder day from a decade ago with the specific reverence other families saved for church. We didn't go to church on Sundays. We skied. There was a pool table down there that, as far as I know, never once hosted a game of pool. I used it as a Lego table. Sat cross legged on top of the felt building sets while the adults argued good naturedly about whose route down what had been gnarlier, the carpet smelling like wet wool no matter how many times it got vacuumed. Utah on a Friday night in winter doesn't give a kid many options. This was the option. I didn't know what a dive bar was yet. I just knew this was the closest thing to one I'd ever been allowed in, and I loved it.

The parking lot at Solitude had the F.O.G.S. F'ing Old Guys. A loose crew colloquially named that showed up every single day, cooked breakfast off the tailgate, drank at 8am regardless of weather, and then went and skied all day like it was the only appropriate response to clawing your way to age 70 and having legs that worked. Same energy as the guys who used to show up on Warren Miller tapes, except nobody was filming them nor writing a check and they didn't seem to care, They were just there, permanent fixtures, the way the chairlift was there. I didn't think about them much at six. I think about them constantly now.

Other kids were doing other things. I don't know what, exactly. Birthday parties, probably. Church. Sledding. Theme parks. I was getting raised on a vicarious 90s, horses, a pool table I used for Lego, Sunday services held on a chairlift, and old men who skied like it was a job they'd taken an oath for.

Went back the next morning. Clear, finally, the kind of sharp blue only seen about six thousand feet. Luthor was still there, same spot more or less, white against the snow and the Tetons doing their thing in the background just chomping at the bit for someone to take a photo. Hadn't gone anywhere. Didn't need to.

Camped that night with the cold doing what it does in Wyoming, which is mean it. Fell asleep thinking about skis and horses and the FOGS and that pool table covered in half built Lego sets, and how somehow, without anyone planning it, I'd built a childhood around exactly the right things. I’ll get some Legos in the morning.