Right time, right place
Fall 2007
I’m chasing the Pink Girl across the ridge line, riding as hard as my short stems will spin, trying to reach the crest before the snow. The graupel is starting to come in but it’s mostly aesthetic on top of brown trail and yellow aspen leaves. Pink Girl is a fast descender, even though she says she isn’t, so I’m pushing to keep up, sliding the banks, popping off little rocks and everything is just flowing.
Four weeks earlier she’d asked me what my favorite place is and I’d been unable to answer accurately; “uhh, Maui is nice but I also like Alta”, or something.
Somewhere in the Aspens, faster than I should be going, when I didn’t crash, when the steam and heat flowed off of me but the rain and snow were repelled, I hit that moment…I don’t know, I guess it’s that Zen thing. I realize that I’m exactly where I want to be, doing the only thing I want to do, with the right person. “Pink, this is it, it’s not a place, I don’t have a favorite place, I just have favorite moments that I try to recreate.” She looks at me, with mud on her face and says, “fucking duh!”, and rips back into the trail. Zen is not for her.
For the rest of the ride I collect all of those moments in my head: bottomless wallowing deep powder days when I’ve chosen the right skis (Sqauds), right jacket (Burton AK 3L), right gloves (those same leather Scott gloves they have been making for years) and right goggles (Smith Regulator TurboCam- So dorky but so key on deep days). I feel like a gladiator, armored perfectly for the battle. I watch others who have not chosen their gear wisely, streaming back inside. The mountain empties as the storm intensifies and I’m toasty and I just couldn’t be more in the groove.
–John Bresee
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