The Longest Lap
Last day of ski school. It’s Easter weekend, and Peaks 9 and 10 have already called it. Suites at the ski-in/ski-outs are half off, and the Front Range has shifted its focus to bikes and crash pads.
But Ullr isn’t quite done. In just 24 hours, we go from springlike 50s to a full foot of powder—the kind of surprise dump that puts grins on every wind-chapped face. A gift, really. And just as my client and I gear up to take full advantage, we see a sign that the T-bar—our straightest shot to the untouched high alpine—is out of commission.
“Broken motor,” a patroller shrugs. “They’ll need to order a part. Could take a week.”
Translation: the easy route is gone. Yes, the powder is here, but if we want it, we’ll have to work for it. What would’ve been a five-minute tow turns into a three-lift trek. The snow is heavy. The legs are weary—not just from today, but from a winter’s worth of turns.
It would’ve been easy to say, “Next time.” But there isn’t a next time. Not this season.
Lately, I think about time’s passage less in chapters and more in migrations. Seasonal movement is older than memory. As the ski season winds down in the Rockies, Beaver Creek closes early to protect migrating elk. Meanwhile, in Maine, where I am heading soon, alewives swim from the sea up into rivers to spawn.
People move, too—not always north to south, but in cycles of effort and rest, departure and return. My own rhythm swings west to east: mountain to coastline, ski pole to paddle blade, snow to sea, then back again.
In between migrations, we settle. Not forever, but long enough to make a place feel like home. For the Peak 8 ski school staff, the locker room has long been our preferred wintering grounds. It’s like a nesting site for instructors. A place where we warm up and snack. We hunker down from November to April, only to fly away without a second thought during the off-season.
But this year, it’s different.
“Everything has to be out by the end of the day today,” one of our supervisors announces as he walks the aisles. One locker is conspicuously missing its door, which its former occupant sentimentally unscrewed to take home as a souvenir. “They’re coming with pickaxes on Monday.”
The doorless locker and broken T-bar prompt me to reflect on the myriad patterns that define us. There are micro ones etched into muscle memory: carving turns, planting poles, feathering strokes. Then there are the preferred lines we follow to powder stashes and tongues of greenwater through a river rapid. And beyond that, unfold deeper, slower arcs: macro movements of identity, of purpose, of passion, and places we call home.
Regardless of one’s religious identification, the Easter story is perfect for reminding us that these aren’t detours. They’re the route. Death and rebirth. Development and demolition. Disappearance and return.
At the base of Peak 8, my client and I thread our way through mid-March-sized crowds and the bottlenecks of a mountain in retreat. One chairlift. Then another. And another. The extra time above snow gives us room to really talk. He is insightful and kind. Two seasons of sending together, I realize, we have become good friends. Finally, we reach the summit of Imperial. One last, glorious descent through the thick snow still clinging to Whale’s Tail and Horseshoe Bowl. The lap is long, unwieldy, and enough to turn many skiers away. But for those who persist, the reward is untracked lines and rare solitude.
I return to the locker room exhausted but fulfilled. One of my closest instructor pals rolls in at the same time. I’m squinting at the bases of my skis, trying to decide whether the sharks beneath the powder were nibbling or feasting.
“Did you win the Easter egg hunt?”
“Yes. I found every single rock hidden on this mountain.”
We giggle as we scrape the wet snow from our skis. The joke covers some of the unspoken heaviness in our hearts. It’s time to clean out our lockers—for the last time. I hand her a spare canvas bag, and in go the goggles, gaiters, lesson books, uneaten snacks, handwarmers, sunscreen—all the tools of the trade.
This season, as we fly away, we’re like the Atlantic puffins of Eastern Egg Rock—birds who once stopped coming home. With their nesting ground gone, they disappeared. But not forever. Because home, as it turns out, is fluid.
Two autumns ago, on my first trip to Midcoast Maine, I stepped aboard the Audubon Society’s puffin boat and chugged out of Boothbay Harbor. I didn’t know then that I’d be coming back to work there as a sea kayak guide. I just wanted to see the birds. To be close to something small and marvelous. And yet, I was deeply touched by the story of the puffins, how they lost and regained their home, and the many, many helping hands that went into making that miracle happen.
Back then, it felt like a one-off. A moment as singular as the birthday whose occasion prompted the excursion. But now, with the Peak 8 locker room vanishing into memory, I realize: that was the beginning of another migratory path. One habitat disappears; another one takes shape. I thought I was visiting. It turns out I was already returning, setting out on a long, unexpected lap guided by something quieter than even intention.
As ski season fades and paddling season stirs, it shouldn’t feel like an ending—but with my uniform crumpled in a bag downstairs, it sort of does.
Outside my window, a western meadowlark perches in the aspen branches lining the Blue River—quiet harbinger of change. Her presence is a gentle reminder: migration is life, but it isn’t always linear. It loops, diverges, and rewinds. The body learns the pattern before the mind names it. Tired but steady, the months ahead are full of beginnings that I haven’t even recognized have already begun.