Stop Hey What's That Sound
Winter Man By PHIL GALLAGHER

Did I dream their existence? I seem to be the only one who remembers them at all. Often I ask strangers next to me on this new chairlift if they remember the trees that used to stand here on the ridge. I ask right as we pass over the spot where they once stood. Where they soldiered on each season. I wait for the exact moment when we pass through their shadowy ghosts, ghosts still wandering and dazed from being struck down so suddenly.


The first storm hit with a fury on October 14, dropping more than two feet of snow. The second arrived a week later depositing another two feet. The third came only four days later, bringing the October snowfall to well over 50 inches. The resort decided to open early which meant I only had a week to hike and ski the entire mountain by myself.

I wanted to see the new lift they built over the summer, the high speed quad that replaced the old double. Progress they called it, with all its revenue-enhancing guises. More like a profit war machine. I hated to see the old lift go. I had lost too many brothers over the years. Too many chairs around the bullwheel. Saying goodbye was something I was no longer good at.

It took two hours of easy skinning to reach the top. I avoided the steeps and followed mellow trails and ridges to the summit I knew so well. At the top I walked close to the lift station to survey the ridge and immediately felt emptied. I felt it all over again. I just couldn't believe what I saw. Not here.


Those evergreens had a life I say to the faceless figure sitting beside me. And I knew them. On deep days there were runs in that small world of wood and rock that left me crying. The faceless figure stares back with blank indifference. It's the same look I see on the face of the person who was elected to run this resort.

During the previous Christmas holiday he stands outside the mountain restaurant where I work wearing a sign that reads "Can I Help You?" It is three weeks into the season and still no passes for the employees. He says we have to wait until after New Year's Day for that privilege. He says we need to preserve what little snow has fallen for the true ticket buyers. I see the numbers working in his head. I know his sign is not meant for me. His business is people and campaigns, but I long to walk up and burn his face with harsh truths.



I sat down in the snow to collect myself. They were completely chopped down. Even the stumps were removed from the ridge. Those pine trees were there long before the resort was built. They earned their existence through strife. They harbored the steepest and best powder shots on the whole mountain. Now it was as if they had never existed. I accepted the fact that a new chair was inevitable, but to obliterate 30 trees seemed criminal.

And I could see why those trees meant nothing to him. I could hear his explanation, a sincere voice full of compassion and pronouncement and understanding. Like a tricky politician on television. It is necessary in the big picture to sacrifice life for progress. I had heard that line before. I can hear his calm, cool words sentencing death. I can hear the order given, the draft issued. I can hear the guns firing. I can hear the saws severing.

And now no one remembers the trees so I keep the memory all to myself. They're gone just like Steve and Bags and Carson and Wayne and Ran and others who died young way before their time.


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Kristopher Kaiyala contributed to this story.