2010, off to a beautiful start.
In years past I’ve always brought in the new year front country style: cheap Champaign, mediocre DJ music, annoying noise makers that spring out then curl up like cowards, kisses with strangers; you know, the usual arsenal. During those front country celebrations I’ve attended, New Year’s feels like a tangible, concrete thing. As the moment nears, the countdown begins and the euphoria of the masses builds higher and higher. The cheering and joy that erupts as the clock strikes 12 marks a distinct line between this year and last.
This year, because of the blue moon rising on 2010, I celebrated backcountry style with a midnight ski toward the ghost town of Gothic, north of Crested Butte. And in those wilder lands with fewer souls, I found midnight to be a more subtle experience – an event akin to a branch bending in the wind, or snow squeaking beneath a well-waxed ski.
Around 7 o’clock on New Year’s Eve my girlfriend, Reed, and I carbo loaded some spaghetti and elk sausage for the big ski. For desert, a snifter of Poor Man’s Bailey’s. Our circadian rhythms insisted it was bed time, but AC/DC’s face-melting guitar solos blaring on the local radio station, KBUT, meant one thing and one thing only: time to celebrate. So we layered up and headed out into the night.
We drove through town around 10:00. Christmas lights framed store fronts, and mobs of tourists and locals alike strolled boisterously down the icy sidewalks: some hurried to their $100 all-inclusive events, while others stumbled toward the nearest drinking establishment with the heater on and no cover charge. Even the trailhead was bustling. As I strapped on my Nordic skis for the season’s first ride, I counted the cars of dozens of like-minded folks.
The round, silver moon was already high above Crested Butte Mountain when we took off, chasing our moon shadows down the trail. The cold, moon-blue snow was fast, and I was enjoying that rare experience of having chosen the perfect kick wax: kick and glide, kick and glide. A mile in we had to stop to put on moon screen and moon glasses (nothing worse than a moon burn, or moon blindness). Around 11:30 we paused to sip some hot chocolate and Irish cream. When we stilled our rustling clothes and squeaking bindings, space and silence and light rushed out of the land.
No wonder they call it a blue moon.
We skied on, sometimes chatting about this and that, sometimes swishing along without a word. In a grove of aspens, Reed stopped, took out her cell phone, and smiled. She snapped the phone closed and put it back in her pocket. “Happy New Year!” she said. We shuffled our skis parallel for our first kiss of the decade. It was 12:11 a.m., and as I hugged Reed, I looked around at the snowy hills, the fox and deer tracks splitting the bright, silvery fields and the silhouetted aspen branches above. Somewhere in the valley the snowpack settled with a low, echoing growl. After reveling in the moment, we continued on home.
“I love how anticlimactic New Year’s is out here,” I said, breaking a quarter mile of quiet.
“Yeah,” said Reed between short breaths that hung frozen in the air. “Just another moment in another trip around the sun.”
