3

When I was little, our neighbors were clouds. We lived in this cabin at City Center. It was part of Dad’s job. They needed someone to trudge out pre-dawn, dip a yardstick, and phone in each night’s snowfall amount. This was 1998, before the world became addicted to websites and smart phones. A brassy-voiced woman would record the snow report, and TV, radio, and thousands of people would call the hotline. I’m not kidding. Skiing is big business. Crystal Mountain’s guest capacity is 24,000. Dad was the guy in charge of safety.

Life in the clouds was heaven. Two chairlifts surged up to City Center from front-side and Gold Bowl, but our cabin was nestled away from them, behind a cupped hand of pines. It had one main room, a bedroom only an arm’s length bigger than its queen bed, and an elbow-banger of a bathroom. My white crib was in the main room. When I got sleepy, Mom would lay me down in my footie pajamas, humming “Blackbird.” I’d suck my thumb, watching, as she and Dad read or played a game or snuggled on the couch till I slept. Mom + Dad = me.

Mornings, pre-dawn, Dad would shuffle from the bedroom and stuff on his boots. He’d come back in from measuring the snow, cold stuck to him, and lift me out, carrying me on his hip as he made that call. I’d stretch to grab the phone’s curly black cord, big in my small hand—our narrow link to the world. Things change.

Days, Mom and I built snowmen or forts or explored nature. I’d toddle around and she’d say, “A is for avalanche. B is for bear. C is for cornice. H is for hawk. L is for lodge. P is for powder. S is for ski. T is for tree.” Like it helped.

We had no TV. We’d cuddle on the couch, and Mom would read and read and read to me. Book after book after book. We’d practice matching sounds with letters, Mom saying, You can do it, over and over and over. Her gifts to me: a deceptive vocabulary and the patterns of stories etched in my bones. Just don’t ask me to write them down.

Beyond that cupped hand of pines, a gliding city teemed around us. Sometimes, a friend visited while her mom skied. A couple days a week, Mom would fire up our snowmobile and we’d descend to town for music or dance class, story hour at the library, or play group. We’d haul groceries and books home in a little ski trailer.

Mom always bought flowers. I’d sit in front of her on the snowmobile and shelter those flowers as we ascended the runs’ edges, skiers and boarders streaming down. Those blooms would color our table. I’d stand on a chair and run my fingertip along a tulip, a rose, a daisy, and feel ridiculously proud.

Most days, Dad joined us for lunch. It always began with Mom and Dad kissing. Always kissing. Dad would bring Wash or Sarge or Crispy or Big John. Never two at once. Somebody had to work. Back then, “Uncle” came before their names, and I knew the balance of each of their knees. Wash, a bachelor always, would stay with us some nights. His snores would wake me, and I’d study his sprawled self on the couch and understand, even then, that our equation was really Mom + Dad + our ski-patrol family = me.

Dad was always out early to check snow safety. If there was accumulation, or if the night wind had howled, he’d be dynamiting cornices or avalanche areas. We’d hear the distant booms and I’d say, Daddy. Dad read snow like other people read the newspaper.

Evenings were golden. The lifts closed. The patrollers finished sweep. The only humans were us and maybe Wash. Tara would usually stop by. Mom would fill her travel mug with coffee before she rumbled away in her snowcat, headed on her nightly journeys. Deer, elk, fox, ermine, lynx, mountain lion, and bear would emerge.

Summers were best, though. We’d see only the occasional hikers or mountain bikers, but even they weren’t around till the Fourth of July. Forest Service closures for elk calving kept Crystal Mountain’s outer reaches off-limits till then, so the action stayed at Emerald West and front-side.

One lazy summer afternoon, a moose strolled right past the cabin’s deck. Dad and Mom sat in comfy patio chairs, listening to insects buzz while I colored with markers between them. I was at Dad’s chair in a second, and we froze, Dad’s hand firm against my hip.

“He’s a long way from marshland,” Mom said.

“He’s headed to Secret Lake,” Dad said.

Secret Lake was a retention pond just down the ridge that held water for snowmaking. There, Dad taught me to skip rocks. He was an amazing rock skipper, and he taught me to lean and cock back my arm, flick my wrist last for extra momentum. I got pretty good but could never match Dad’s forty-six skips along that mirrored surface, the rock stopping just shy of the pond’s far edge. I used to love to watch the rings of those skips merge, forming a new wave pattern till it rolled against the shore. Even then, patterns whispered to me.

Another time, Dad reclined in a patio chair and I reclined against him, watching twilight gild Phantom Peak while Mom sizzled something oniony on the stove. She called, “Watch for the first star!” just as a rangy scrap of gray streaked between the patches of late-spring snow in the open stretch in front of the pines. Dad and I shot forward, peering.

“Wolf!” Dad said. “I’d swear it.” He wrapped protective arms around me and leaned back.

Every night, coyotes would yip in the dark. Some nights, we’d hear the mewl of a mountain lion. Or the similar mewling bark of a bear cub, and a mothering grunt. Foxes made a coughing noise. In fall, elk called for mates in squeaking threads that rode the crisp air. We never heard the raccoons, but they wreaked havoc if we left anything out, and porcupines consumed shoes, coats, helmets—anything with salt from sweat. Skunks we avoided by smell.

And then once, as Mom ran in for a snack, I spied a guy standing at the forest’s edge with long black hair and a sleeveless deerskin shirt, pants, and moccasins. A bow was slung over his shoulder, and a knife rode his hip. I was playing with a kitty camp I’d gotten for my fifth birthday. I rose on pudgy legs. Yearning filled his face. Yearning for me. I backed toward the door, saying, “Momma?” Mom came out carrying a plate of cheese and crackers, and the guy vanished into the trees.

“What, Sov?”

I pointed. “Ute!”

“Ute?” She scanned where I pointed. “There aren’t Utes here anymore, silly.”

My chin quivered.

“Come here and have a snack. Should we read our book about Utes before our nap?”

I nodded and sniffled, but my boogieman had taken root. Sometimes, I dreamed about him, and I’d wake screaming. In them, he watched me from anywhere forests edged my life.

Calves, fawns, cubs, me—all us babies in heaven. Mom gave me one extra year. Then I turned six, and school’s predatory world yanked me from those clouds and into a living nightmare.