Ski resorts transport people up mountain sides in elevated moving chairs—literally. A suited butler-ish person greets, holds the chair, making sure passengers are comfortably and safely seated. Thank you, Jeeves.
Generally, pleasant music is playing for this interchange, and then in the next magical moment, if all goes well with the seating, passengers find themselves floating above the trees, looking down at beautiful snow-covered landscapes and mountain vistas as far as the eye can see.
Arriving at the top, more butler-esque personnel are on hand to ensure passengers disembark safely. Disembarking, one stands, literally, on top of a mountain surveying horizons in all directions. In some places, a dining establishment is plunked down just in case a hot chocolate might satisfy. “Cloud Dine’s” offerings tickled interest, given its punny name. Literally, where else does one “mountain climb” like this?
And that is the magic of going up the mountain. Then, one gets to go down!
With fresh “pow”—powder dry snow—skiers float on sparkling crystals, fluffing crystalline fairy-dust at each turn. If fortunate, no one has been down the run, and skis leave signature schussing trails on open hills. Skiing through pow patches, rising and falling, an intoxicating rhythm builds, figuratively, transcendentally towards bliss.
Alternatively, one may drop into a glade. Gliding through white and green boughs. Stopping. Resting. Meditatively quiet. Snow-muffled sound. Robert Frost in Vermont knew and wrote of such quiet and eternal things.
Fun facts: Robert Frost was born in March 1874 and died in January 1963. He was poet laureate of Vermont, and received four Pulitzer prizes and the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Interestingly, Frost was born in San Francisco. At age 11, after the death of his journalist father, Frost and his family moved east to Lawrence, MA. Frost attended Dartmouth College for two months, then Harvard University for two years, but graduated from neither.
Frost won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for his book, New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes. Some of his famous poems are: “The Road Not Taken,” “The Mending Wall,” “Birches,” “The Gift Outright,” “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and his shortest poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Hat tip to S&D.
