Author: Emma

Kicking the Seasonal Avoidance Disorder habit: How I learned to love my favorite places all year long

We rented bikes and took the lifts to the top, from whence we careened back down the mountain on trails hidden all winter by feet of snow. The runs I’d skied so many times looked different, shed of their cold-weather clothing, but not at all unpleasant. It had never occurred to me that there was more to this place than the way I saw it between December and March, that there were nearly 2,500 acres of unexplored terrain beneath the mountain’s annual 300” of snowfall. It had never occurred to me that Copper Mountain had layers.

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I grew up skiing at Copper Mountain, a resort at the edge of I-70 just shy of Vail Pass. I skied there dozens of times every winter in college, and I could’ve recited the runs accessed by each lift from memory or told you exactly how to get from Super Bee to Spaulding Bowl and back again. I knew when, on any given lift, to look for the tree adorned with Mardi Gras beads and discarded bras—that ski area staple—and that I had precisely four-and-a-half minutes to choke down the disfigured peanut butter sandwich in my pocket before the American Flyer quad deposited me at the top of my favorite run.

I thought I knew Copper Mountain pretty well. Continue reading “Kicking the Seasonal Avoidance Disorder habit: How I learned to love my favorite places all year long” →

Ode to a Cheeseburger

When, at long last, I spotted the Colorado River from my perch atop the Poison Spider Mesa, I waxed poetic to my new friend about the singular pleasure of a Milt’s malt, and how I believed I was finally ready to take my relationship with Milt’s to the next level: Would I finally take the plunge and order tots AND onion rings?

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In 1987, the New York Giants beat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXI, and Giants quarterback Phil Simms kicked off what has become perhaps one of the best-known phrases in marketing history.

“I’m going to Disneyland!” he exclaimed.

Thanks to a tragically short attention span, I don’t really follow professional sports, and I’m certainly not one of those steel-trap folks who can tell you sport-trivia from decades before they were born. But this phrase rings true with me. Continue reading “Ode to a Cheeseburger” →

From the archives: On Couples’ Yoga

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Ah, Milt’s! I can almost hear the chorus of angels.

From the archives: This Valentine’s Day, I will be in Moab, running an excruciatingly long race with my perma-Valentine (more on that next week). I anticipate a romantic dinner at Milt’s, where Bix will find it endearing when I finish my double bacon cheeseburger and start in on his onion rings, and not just because he is now legally bound to think everything I do is cute. In any case, in my absence, here’s a throwback to one of my less fun (but ultimately more memorable!) Ghosts of V-Days Past.
Continue reading “From the archives: On Couples’ Yoga” →

A mid-season reflection: What are those turns worth?

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As I’ve written before, I’ve spent a lot of the last handful of years thinking about death. Not in an abstract way—what is life; who am I?—but in an all-too-real, terribly concrete way: both professionally and for recreation, the pursuits I’m drawn to require us to undertake a great deal of risk, and lately I’ve read the accident reports of peers, colleagues, friends-of-friends, and role models who bore the consequences of that risk in the most catastrophic way imaginable. Continue reading “A mid-season reflection: What are those turns worth?” →

2015: My Search for the Endless Winter

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It was just after seven o’clock on what was shaping up to be an unseasonably warm, sunny, late September morning, and I sat perched on a rock outcrop at the top of St. Mary’s Glacier, about a thousand feet above the little hamlet of Alice, Colorado. I rifled fruitlessly through my pack, hoping to find something more appetizing than an ancient, misshapen Clif bar.

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No-snow September. Bix’s face says it all.

Bix, long since resigned to going along with any number of harebrained schemes, fiddled with a half-empty Nalgene bottle, perhaps in an attempt to avoid making eye contact with the slope below us.

“And you’re sure this is a good idea?” he asked hesitantly, though he already knew the answer. Continue reading “2015: My Search for the Endless Winter” →