The month of December blessed our pocket of peaks with several feet of snow and the gods of commerce blessed me with tips-a-plenty. All in all, I've made enough cash to pay for rent and essentials without ever using a paycheck. This has led to the inevitable conclusion of buying a brand new Nikon D90 which is on it's way into my arms as we speak.
The past few weeks have found me in many different situations that I couldn't have imaged a month ago and I mean that in the best possible way. Whether it's going to a house party with only a handful of people, including some friendly Brazilian girls who taught me to dance on New Years (if you can call the shuffling I came up with as dancing), walking three miles at three in the morning with temperatures in the negatives under a blanket of stars and a monochrome rise of hills covered in patchwork with fluffy snow, or conquering my first double black diamond runs with belly-button deep powder.
My job has become largely automatic as I weave in between conversations with guests, radio checks and getting to know the cool people that I work with every day. It's become second nature to engage everyone that comes within ten feet of me in pleasantries, to ask them about their day or find out their plans. I've become much more open to polite conversation with strangers and have picked the brains of many who come through the archway of my hotel about their line of work or the sensation of heli-skiing in the untouched back country. In between I've found the time to chat up Hillary Swank about Taiwan and practice my Chinese on the astonished guests from our neighbor to the West.
I've come to be acquainted with a vast array of new accents from places dotting the length of the American continents all the way to the very tip. They have renewed my vigor for exploring the land below our happy village of the United States and have implanted many new avenues of thought for the way my future will play out in the coming months and years. It's interesting trying to recall my ancient Spanish language abilities fostered through consecutive C-'s in high school which has become mixed up with the grab bag of Chinese floating through my mind. Sometimes, I reach in to find one word in Spanish, and come up with Chinese, and others I astonish even myself with an ear for understanding either. The international community that springs up each winter in this ski town, and many more, conjures images of an ancient port city on the spice trade lines; but with all the hippest snowboard gear.
The fashion associated with mountain communities has long been a curiosity of mine, from the lean gray foxes with their immaculate one piece ski suits to their bejeweled wives carving lines with stylish pony tails wrapped in lengths of white fur from some indiscriminate animal which was too cute for it's own good. Combine these aging retirees with their flashy offspring and you find yourself not at all surprised to come across a Lil' Wayne lookalike, pants sagging to the point of complete disuse and tall tees fluttering somewhere around their shins, hopping off a gondola with parents who ripped their entire outfit off of a mannequin at L.L. Bean. It's an eclectic group that is sure to find a home for any genre of couture.
My new camera will be coming next week, so the site should be getting some shiny new eye candy soon by way of brilliant sunshine and gloriously white slopes. I hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am.
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