Time Travel

People that learned how to ski out in the West or the Rockies have little appreciation for the pain of being a skier from the East and Midwest. Whereas they would have sexy attire and snow bunnies we would have survival gear and animals in frozen storage. Our apparel was not for show but for comfort – almost no part of one’s anatomy was allowed to be exposed.

When you ride a chairlift in Sun Valley or Breckenridge they would hand you some sun block. At Stowe in Vermont or Wing Hollow in New York State they would hand you a blanket just to be able to survive the chair lift ride. And of course the snow is completely different too. Out west it’s fluffy and soft while back east it’s more like a wide open toboggan run. If you fall there and don’t die from the impact you’ll scream all the way down the hill trying to grab onto the ice glazed mountain. Of course the Polar Bears are watching and laughing hysterically. Okay so I exaggerate, polar bears can’t laugh.

So suffice it to say that it’s COLD back east during skiing season. But being Polish and having friends that are like minded we weren’t satisfied with the cold blistering wind chill of Vermont, we had to try our luck in the frigid, frozen Canadian tundra. There was a resort there and I use the term loosely, called Blue Mountain located by the Georgian Bay. This ski resort also attracted people from foreign lands that had no idea when they booked their trip that one’s breath could actually freeze in mid air. We skied there a few years because there were never any lines for the chairlift. And in a surreal way you would never see any people at all, just bundles of clothing flying down the hill or a few tumbling like the inside of a dryer trying to get a grip on the ice. No one exposed any skin and so all you could see were snowsuits and goggles and there was hardly anyway to tell a male from a female which meant it was just safer to make your move in the lodge.

I tell you all this to get to my story of the day which is that one night in Blue Mountain I met a girl. She was visiting from England with her parents. It was New Year’s Eve and we spent the night dancing and talking while her parents shivered by the fire. By the time the next year rolled around we had agreed to keep in touch and we both went our merry ways as the Brits say. We actually wrote back and forth for a number of years, almost ten I think. And although we would talk on the phone from time to time we did not arrange to meet. When she got married the letters finally stopped, duh. And that was that – a nice dance or two, a pen pal and memories.

Many, many years later I received a call from my English friend from so many years before. She had found me through the internet and when I picked up the phone she asked if I was the same guy that sent her so many letters from Ohio and later California. Not many people have my name, especially west of the Mississippi so I confessed that I was that guy that so many years before had enjoyed some genuine warmth amidst the chattering coldness of Canada.

She told me that she was getting divorced and as so many do, she starting going through the recycle bin looking for those transient and rare connections that mark our lives. I’m not quite sure how far down the list I was but I was happy to be included. She told me that she lived in Canada, ayee and that she wanted to reconnect. We arranged to meet in Las Vegas. After that trip she visited me here in California and then a couple of times since I’ve met her in Ohio and she got the chance to meet my family. Yes we are different now with different needs and circumstances but we are still connected. Through the time and the cold and ice and the letters we found a warm spot. A place to embrace and enjoy and to remember that love can travel through time and distance and still be clear and forever young – as it should be.