Flashback to 2004. 20 years ago. A friend and I drove from Vermont to Montana over a two-day push, only stopping to sleep in the back of the truck at a ski hill in Wisconsin. From there, it was sheet ice all the way to Bozeman.
I moved here at my mother’s suggestion—I’d told her I was thinking of moving to Alaska, and, having backpacked in Bear Basin north of Big Sky the year before I was born, she said, “How about Bozeman?”
My first job was selling homemade cookies off my tailgate at the turnoff to Bridger. Some of the people I met back then are still dear friends, and others have become trusted colleagues. Whether or not we’ve been partners in the mountains, those relationships are built on a mutual respect for those wild places and what it takes to move through them.
Now, as I prep for my first total knee replacement (big left!), with the other likely to follow (oh, loyal right), I’m looking back on my early adventures here. How much that time in the mountains formed me.
Planning this thing feels like planning a wilderness expedition. I’m completing client work so everyone is good to go while I’m out, lining up gear and logistics (I splurged on new crutches!), squeezing in the last bit of prehab training, and most importantly, getting my mind right.
As I tell friends, clients, coaches and colleagues what’s next for me, I’m feeling grateful to be part of such a supportive network of people, each with their own style of wisdom and care. I may still be a soloist, but I’m not sitting alone on my tailgate selling cookies anymore.
Hopefully on the other side of this, there’s more of that magical dance with snow and Earth we’re so lucky to know as skiing.
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