Ski Season Off Season (The Mud Season Blues)

   No longer  living in a Ski Area, I already have the Mud Season Blues. What is the off Season? What is the Mud Season? If you have never lived near or at a Ski Area. Most Ski Areas in the West close by April 15. Sometimes if they have a lot of snow they will extend there use permit with the Forest Service, (most ski areas in Colorado are on U.S. Forest Service Properties, National Forests.) They will extend their insurance and therefore extend the ski season. Most areas do not extend the season unless conditions are incredible. What does all of this have to do with off season. Areas close by April 15, they do not reopen for the late spring or summer season until May15 or sometimes into June. You have no work. The mountains are muddy with melting snow and no one, no one is around everything is closed.


   I have had some of the greatest off season vacations ever. You save your money all season, if you are a waiter, or a ski tech, or ski employee and you take a vacation for a month. I have travelled America and Canada by rail. Gone to the Ocean in California, Baja, and Cancun for a month, joked about how not many girls are ski bums, although I have had some great girl ski companions it is rare.
So when we went to the sea it was in search of sun, sand, skin, and sisters. I have a short story that I use  that line in Titled (The Rolling Reverend.) It is actually a very good story. Perhaps my best yet, I think it is probably the most commercially sellable story any way. The reason is the humor and the topic. I became stuck in it when the reverend attempts to give his version of the Sermon on the Mound. Anyway there are three to four more ski stories I need to button up for my collection.


   Back to the off season blues, the most memorable off seasons I have spent are in the ski areas that I did not leave. Everyone is gone the towns are empty and a few local pubs and stores stay open. The real hard cores stay. You take your skis and walk up and ski the soft vanilla cream melting snows and then come down through the muck and mud and running streams of mountain water and have lunch with your local friends. Just too much fun and excitement, too much adrenaline. Dodging rocks and large areas of gravel and green growing grass.


   Vail was my most favorite. Late at night walking around the village and up the trails to the restaurants and bars from lower to upper Bridge Street. You could hear all the Mountain Streams breaking the silence in the dark running downhill. The Mountain was alive and thriving in the growth of new life. Aah! the off season, thinking about it now, don't think there was anything blue about it at all. These days I don't have off seasons, I did when I lived and worked in Aspen, recently. However even those days have ended. Perhaps I will again in the future when I move to Oregon. Maybe I'll experience and Ocean off season. I almost had the perfect off season set up. Living in Vail in the winter and Charleston, South Carolina in  the summer. Someday I will tell the story of the Former Georgia State Trooper who stole $50,000 dollars from our packing and shipping companies Western Union and dashed our dreams of opening packaging and shipping stores in the Mountains and the Ocean, every year. Not Today Berta! Truly and Off Season Blues Story.


   I have had somewhat of an Epiphany regarding the research for my Historical Novel. For almost all the time I have researched and thought about the work I have fixated on Arapahoe Basin. I know the principles and have spoken to them about the work. I have completely excluded half of the equation. The half I have neglected is the mountain of Keytone, which eventually bought Arapahoe Basin. I know it was started by Max and Edna Dercum and Earl Eaton. Max wrote a book. Titled, It's all Down Hill from Here, Edna. The thing about it is I don't know who the principles were in 1978-79. I have aways believed it was Ralston Purina owned by Senator Dansforth. I could be total off base because I have neglected to do my  research. It not only opens up a whole new chapter of the work. It may hold the key to the truth of the event that I have been seeking. The truth is I didn't pursue the Senator in my research I omitted what is most likely the most important piece of truth and fact. What was Keystones motivation to own Arapahoe Basin? The Mountain at the time was probably the second largest ski area in the world. Second only to Vail. It was almost seven miles long in frontage on the highway with terrain in the mountains. The History of both of these areas is so new that the truth is there isn't that much. Excepting the interviewing of the principals involved. I suppose it is public record who owned what and the time frame they owned it in. I do know that after Keystone purchased Arapahoe Basin and Copper Mountain, they were forced to sell off Arapahoe Basin in an anti-trust lawsuit. What was that about and what brought that on?


   I have just recently ventured on to the Campus of Mesa University. It shouldn't be too hard to take a trip to their Library and see what information and documents are available. The Summit County Historical Society and Mary Ellen Gilliland are also excellent sources of information. I was also told to attend the Legends of Skiing Dinner in the Fall and that there are key individuals to interview regarding the history. I look forward to the day that I become financially independent enough to pursue this full time or that I get my writing act together enough to get a contract to do it. In the meantime it still is an enjoyable hobby and pursuit. I am at the stage with it to want to pursue it on a more aggressive level. Time does indeed take care of things. I hope it is on my side. I don't know how long or how old the key principles are. Will they still be alive to be interviewed.?

   Off season no such thing in the city, just people going to work and living there lives. They don't know of skiing rocky terrain or even owning a pair of mud skis so you don't wreck your good skis. It seems that they know of the blues, just a different kind of them.

   Today we need to celebrate Spring. I decided on two songs for the occasion. The first is what it feels like to me to be in a city. The second is the Best High Lonesome Loser Cowboy Song that I have ever heard.
"The Weight" The Band
"Cheyenne" George Strait

Happy Easter, hope spring brings joy and happiness into your daily life and world!

Looking Forward to Oregon In The Spring

 I'm happy this minute to be living in Colorado. The East is destroyed by snowstorms, the Pacific Northwest by rain. The days here are unseasonably warm and sunny. It has allowed for long beautiful outdoor walks and drives into the mountains. Aspen is still snowed in and the mountains have great skiing. A plumbing client of mine skinned up Buttermilk and skied down the other morning before our appointment. Great skiing with a sunshine day. I miss skiing but not the hassle of equipment and getting to the hill. Will I miss Colorado if my house and business sell? Greatly, it has always been a respite for me. A place to run to find myself. I have had some of the greatest outdoor adventures of my life in Colorado. If you have never been then you need to get a backpack and a pair of hiking shoes and come on out! You will be glad you did. The opportunities are endless here. I have worked for and performed in a Children's Theatre, had my own business, worked for ski mountains, and met and married my wife here. She was able to fly hot air balloons, become a DJ and radio personality, manage a health club and some of the nicest property in Aspen as well as get a real estate license. Life has been very good to us in the mountains.

   They say that Eugene, Oregon is where old hippies go to die! I am not even close to my death bed yet, far too many books to write and stories to tell and places to see. I have only the Pacific Northwest to explore. Do we question the rain and our ability to handle it? Yes. I suppose I will spend a large amount of time indoors writing, or building something. Don't know about our ability to withstand the cold. As nice as this winter has been I cannot do the cold anymore! Me a child of the cold and wilderness seriously thinking of the warm belts of America. Time and life sure does change your priorities.  I am no longer fooled by Fairy Tale endings because a lot of nice things turn bad out there. You cannot give in to the fear of change. It is harder the older you get but you have to push through.

Aspen Summertime Blue

You know the saying, "We came here for the winters, but we stay here for the summers." It is a point well taken. Some of the most incredible outdoor experiences I have ever had have been in Colorado in the summer. While I no longer live in the Vail Valley and the great expanse of the Gore Range, I remember fondly climbing Mount Holy Cross, a fourteener there. The many all day bike rides up Vail Pass down in the Red Cliff and into Minturn and back to Vail, or just riding my mountain bike up to the top of Vail (Benchmark) and traversing the trails before dropping into West Vail. Yes, I did find lost lake up on the way to Piney Lake and no, I never could find it again after that day. It was pure joy in the fall to bike up to the meadows above Piney Lake and to traverse down in the late afternoon in the sunshine into the massive stands of Aspen's with their golden leaves forming a treacherous yellow brick road leading into the gut sucking steep downhill into West Vail. It helped me tremendously to be surrounded by young enthusiastic outdoors people in the summer. Although I remember leaving Vail for Aspen and saying that I was tired of the steep enclosed Valley and the Valley Fever and how it would be great not to be the oldest person on an outing. I do miss the view of Vail from the top of the Gore Range or walking across the Covered Bridge on a full moon night and listening to the rushing waters of Gore Creek heading toward the Eagle River.

It brings me to the somewhat more sublime photo of Ajax (Aspen Mountain) and the summertime blue. I first came to Aspen for a film and screenwriters conference and made my mind up then to move back here. It was where I thought I would actively pursue my writing career. Yes I have written some great things here. All the beautiful early morning love letters to my adorable wife, which helped me to win her hand. So I suppose that must be considered my best writing although some of those were pretty steamy and did get me in trouble for leaving them in her desk at work where any of our coworkers could have found them. Yes I have managed to publish “Of Mountain and Men” my book of poetry and I have finished, “The Lure of the Mountain King and Other Stories.”

The best thing about that and my writing is that some day I will be able to say to a publisher that the Olympics come every four years to a great mountain of the world and my writing can be published in almost all the languages present at the Olympics and if I am extremely lucky my work could become the book or books read around the world. In the meantime as I work in my plumbing and heating company in Aspen I often stop and step out on the porch of one of my client’s houses and am confronted by a scene such as this photo. The beautiful greens of the grasses and evergreens against the deep blue of the Aspen sky washes away all of my worries and doubts and reminds me that my six month plan to make it to Eugene, Oregon and a lovely house on Friendly Street with a cabin up the McKenzie and a condominium at Driftwood Shores in Florence at the ocean isn’t that far out of line. I just need to get publishing my e-books. Next will be “All God’s Horses,” then “Arapahoe Basin, The Legend,” and finally, “Out of America.” Until then whenever I get the Aspen Blues I will step out side and smell the pines and gaze at the Grandeur of my office.