March 9, 2005
Powderhorn

Sweet memories.  It all began innocently enough.  A couple of Tuesday’s back Jan was hosting her bridge group; cause enough for me to clear the area.  Based upon reports, there was “killer” snow on the Mesa, I decided to head to Powderhorn and play “slat rat” for an afternoon.  All my skiing buddies were otherwise occupied so Plateau Canyon found me driving solo. That bending road brought back a rush of memories, from Jan and I, new to Grand Junction in the late sixties, navigated the same stretch in a VW Bug while years later we duplicated the drive in the family station wagon complete with three daughters.  For some reason John Denver was always on the stereo during ski trips.  The day TV informed us of the Aspen troubadour’s plane crash all three daughters phoned home with sadness in their voice from homes around the country.  And all talked about driving to Powderhorn and singing along to “Rocky Mountain High”.  Sometimes our Sunday morning sojourns would find friend and science teacher extraordinaire, Roger Howard, riding along and pointing out bald eagles in the trees bordering Plateau creek.  My girls thought Roger to be a modern day magician the way he could spot those most majestic of birds.  Their Dad has yet to witness an eagle along that stretch since Roger left us.   

Approaching the Debeque cut-off my car passed a ranch house, the one with the railroad passenger car in back, where the “Think Snow” sign still hangs by the front fence just as it has every time I’ve made this drive since 1968. What’s missing is the mailbox that long ago perched atop a twenty-foot pole complete with a sign reading “Airmail”. 

Then the highway climbs the hill and leads through the town of Mesa and into the pasture country, where we always scanned the fields for herds of elk and deer, followed by the turn off to the Powderhorn access road.  Today you drive on asphalt but when we first navigated our way to the ski area eons ago the last mile could be more than exciting in attempting to steer what wasn’t much more than a dirt path that quickly became a mud bog when exposed to the afternoon sun.  Or a spring snowstorm could turn that same dirt strip into solid ice causing one’s world to feature real live bumper cars.  

Inside the main building one would grunt through putting on ski boots and then stuff the sack lunch beside your shoes in a basement corner before heading out the door and up the mountain.  Sure the buildings have changed but some things are as constant today as they were then.  The main lift still lumbers along at the sleepy pace it did way back in my memory.  Climbing the Mesa you the chair glides past the racecourse where Sunday’s were spent standing and cheering and timing and consoling and congratulating our tiny Buddy Werner racers of twenty years ago.  Skiing off the chair at the top no matter what direction the ski’s are pointed, from Showdown to Yoo-Hoo to Sidewinder (now Bill’s Run) one finds a special memory of skiing with family, of friends no longer here and those special days when the powder was deep and you could “make freshies” outside the boundaries. 

Often life’s special moments sneak up when you’re all by yourself.  Like a Tuesday afternoon at Powderhorn.  At days end the car headed back down the hill toward home.  Approaching Plateau Creek, for old time’s sake, a John Denver CD was slipped into the player.  On the opening line of “Poems, Prayers and Promises”, “I’ve been lately thinking about my life time,” I spotted a bald eagle perched in a cottonwood along the creek.  Thomas Wolfe was wrong; sometimes you can go home again.