Last Tuesday’s big winds blew our morning paper — and my mind. After a sleepless night, a chaotic run with our bounding golden retriever and too much time spent retrieving our recyclables from the neighbor’s yard, the morning was feeling a little unruly.
But while many of us were dealing with windy inconvenience, Eldora Mountain was shattered by terror and trauma. A disturbed employee had shot and killed an adored manager. Suddenly, the inconvenience of a windy morning was a breeze compared to such a tornado of grief.
Eldora Mountain holds the wonder of my family’s growing up. Weekend mornings, I’d drag my children to ski lessons, often still in pajamas as they groaned about how “stupid” lessons were. Thankfully, they’d be goggled and snowsuited by the time we arrived. Sometimes they loved it; sometimes they didn’t — often leaving me haggard and fearful that we’d be the one Colorado family who didn’t ski.
Years later, they have all found their way either by skis or snowboard, and I am left with the beauty of skiing alone where, for a few hours, I am no longer a mother of three or a clinical psychologist lending a trained ear or even a loving wife. I am just me, challenged by moguls instead of questions of parenting, greeted by lift attendants instead of a client’s tears, and embraced by peacefully quiet slopes.
So when I chose to ski the day after the tragedy, I arrived to a somber wake under a clear blue sky. The lift attendants and the employees were the family left behind, all victims in their own way. There was no yellow tape identifying the crime scene. The horror in the minds of the shattered victims who saw red against pure white snow will be a never-forgotten marker. In medical emergencies, there is the call, “Is there a doctor in the house?” But in the aftermath of a trauma, there is a need for compassionate listeners to hear the voices of the frightened and grieving.
I will contribute to the fund listed in the newspaper, but I also felt the need to contribute some kindness toward a mountain in memory of a man I’d never met and to his young family left behind. Pushing my soft scarf away from my face, I shared my condolence with the young woman checking my pass.
“Thanks,” she replied. “I was there and I haven’t slept.”
The hatless lift operator answered, “It’s just overwhelming, and I can’t find my footing.”
And the pale woman shoveling snow nodded and hung her head.
It would be easy to say it is the psychologist in me that so readily wanted to lend an ear. But in truth, that wasn’t it. Eldora has always been a healing and meditative place for me — as a woman, a wife, a mother who has cherished solitude on a snowy mountain. It was gratitude that encouraged me to reach out to strangers, hoping my small gesture might make for a warmer “mourning” as we all try to grapple with the contrast of a black death against the white purity of a ski slope where we all go to just play.
In truth, none of us ski alone, and when a storm blows in of this magnitude, we have to heed the advice of the slanting sign at Eldora, “Please Double Up Due to Windy Conditions.” And sometimes we have to ride triple before we can learn to play again.
Priscilla Dann-Courtney of Boulder is a clinical psychologist.
