Best Job Interview. Ever.

“I don’t have to sell my soul ... He’s already in me”

— The Stone Roses, “I Wanna Be Adored” *

Everything else is below me, and a sinking gutwrench is messing with my mind — it won’t be easy to leave the valley today. For no other reason than: I have spent so much trying to get here; trying to get #hired on my own terms, fresh out of college.

To leave behind the freshly-laminated ski pass that cordons my neck — especially on account of some rookie lodge owners with a case of the first-season-in-Little-Cottonwood jitters — would be ultimately sacrilegious for a #jobseeker such as myself.

Plus, it is the first day after Thanksgiving Day weekend, empty slopes, the skies have been dropping fluffy snow clouds onto the mountain for a full week, and Gunsight has just opened for the first time this season late in the afternoon. Powder stashes lie hidden in the afternoon shadows, untracked, just beyond my ski tips.

Still, the ironic malcontent stabs me. The blower #Utah powder herewith represents an obstacle that separates me from the rental escape-car due back at the SLC airport 20 miles away, not the fuel of pure recreational fun and freedom that it really is.

The rookie lodge owners are a second, albeit wormier, obstacle looming below. For a couple of days now I’ve put myself in their cross hairs for various reasons, and their lodge hasn’t even officially opened for the season. With fewer than twenty-something years of cumulative smarts under my belt, I am clueless. The reek of pure wrath has found its way to me all the way up here in Greeley Bowl and I realize there’s still one final load of my fugitive drift to load into the vehicle.

Alpenglow flickers away my worrisome notion as it spills its golden wealth onto the dusky slopes. Thence the sun will beat away past the mouth of the valley and past the Great Salt Flats where the mighty Pacific will consume it without remorse, just like every other day. Don’t fight the rip tide. They say to relax your body and tread water.

Zip. Goggles down. Lock and load. Push off and charge into a set of creamy turns and melt away into a flawless run that carries me to the base of The Screw Lodge. It feels as though it only took me seven seconds to descend.

Goodbye Post-Grad-Gap-Year-Ski-Career?

Denial... I mechanically dismount from the bindings, climb the steep banks to the road, and cross over to the car. Like a fool, I convince myself that I simply must get that one last milk crate from the lodge’s upper entryway. The short distance back across the road menaces my freedom but I swallow pride and shuffle over to the lodge door to grab that one last milk crate. The entryway opens to a steep set of wooden stairs that slither down into the stone heart of the establishment (and beyond to the flat rope tow gulch from whence I have just skied). I reach in and around the corner without revealing my face. Arms stretch out cautiously toward the plastic Deseret Dairy milk crate that contains the prize: a bunch of music, a beaten-up pair of Radio Shack speakers, and low-fi amplifier.

Suddenly a hollow draft carries itself up the breezeway, past my nose, out the door, and I’m spooked. Quick-grab the crate, close the door, shuffle back across the empty road, and plunk it into the back seat of the car, close the door, and move toward the driver’s side. Done.

But that chilly feeling you get when someone’s in the room with you begins to drift over my shoulders. I smell it. Despite telling myself not to, I turn around and there they are, the two of them, looking smug and curt respectively.

“Where’s the pass,” blurts the lodge owner. His wife is by his side, as though they were a team of nightclub bouncers who’d been at the velvet rope all night waiting for a chance to puff out their chests in a rude rebuke.

“Yep. Just hand over the pass, okay?” conceits the lady.

Wordless, I watch myself remove the long cord from my neck and hold it out in front of me in the sort of slow motion that mocks itself with wretched humility. Trapped. The canyon’s a dead end and State Route 210 is the only exit. I get the sneaky suspicion that these two rookies would not hesitate to call the Sheriff if I tried to flee without forfeiting the ski pass. The pudgy grip of the man’s palm folds over the shiny plastic picture of me. My arm shrinks back into the hole of the red Patagonia jacket I’d bought years ago when I first decided to become a skier. Beneath the jacket are the navy blue CB Sports bib pants that have kept me dry and snug for countless adventures. These fabric things and their glorious history as protectors of my body help keep my mind off of the dire transaction that has just taken place.

“We heard you’re looking around for work. That’s fine with us because we don’t want you at our lodge for the season.”

It doesn’t matter which one of them said it. I am no longer recording actual events in my mind. Rather, I’m trying to be two steps ahead of myself: driving away in the rental car, sinking low into the driver’s seat.

The rat-like thoughts of an escapee begin to foment. Trying not to dignify the comment with some lame response, I let the key spark the last bit of gas in the tank and it chokes out a muff of smog into the air. A trite monolith of futility, the gorgeous snow-laden mountain that I desperately want to call home for one winter season towers above my swirling #GHG #emissions.

An Inter 'View' to Remember...

“Cheer up, mate.” I warn myself. What got me into this jam in the first place is a quarter mile down the road, The Goldminer’s Daughter Lodge (GMD), where I had filled out an application on the previous day — mhmm… guess I shouldn’t have listed the Screw Lodge owners as a reference?

A weird feeling (optimism) creeps into my blood and I jerk the steering wheel toward the giant parking lot adjacent to the GMD. Nothing to lose. But I’m still aloof and the pair of feet that touch the wet gravel of the parking lot seem less like my own and more like the tread of some actor’s bold audition for a hard-to-get part in a blockbuster.

“Uh, it’s all right,” I muse. Besides, the details of my woeful-but-vainglorious last run of the day begin to reemerge, supplanting melancholy and restoring pride to a wounded soul. A deep breath fills my lungs with Wasatch and I catch a glimpse of the High Rustler trail’s reflection on the GMD’s broad glass atrium. Just before sweeping through the automatic doors leading into the front lobby, I realize that the view is a million times better here versus The Screw Lodge.

“Hello there! How can I help you?” The delivery is standard Friendly Lodge Protocol, spoken by an approachable thirty-something woman.

“I’m supposed to see the manager. Is she in?”

“Let me get Elfriede for you.”

Then from a small cubbyhole a petite, wizened lady pops out and briskly approaches the counter where I’m positioned. She exudes a taut energy and her face bears a smirky scowl etched in after decades of pre-SPF sun worshipping. Either that, or she’s just plain pissed off at something. Had The Screw Lodge owners called her just now to warn her I was coming down here?

“Come on,” she bluntly commands with a quick angular thrust of her shoulder. Without waiting to see if I had understood, she exits through a side door at the far end of the front desk, dashing up a stairwell out of sight.

“Oh sh!t,” I think. “She seems upset!”

I hasten to climb the stairs lest she disappear into the maze of hallways in the lodge without me. At the top of the second flight, I just barely see the back of her head as she swings into the colossal glass-cased dining atrium I’d seen from outside. I join her at a table where she has already taken a seat. The walls of the room that are not glass are packed full of black and white ski lore photos of all sizes. I don’t have time to absorb them all. The scene outside is much easier to digest: Mount Superior dominates west and downvalley of the lodge while High Rustler and the old style lower Alta slopes round out the eastern half of the 180° view. 

“We need a dishwasher,” she gruffles, without formally introducing herself. “Two of our guys were caught yesterday with stolen skis. Idiots! They were stupid enough to steal from their own coworkers — the Sheriff escorted them out of the canyon and booted them back to California. Shoulda thrown them in jail, if you ask me.”

“Oh,” I stammer.

I can see her face more clearly now, even in the shadowy corner of the room where we sit. “It’s mornings and evenings and on Thursday you steward the kitchen supplies that get delivered from downvalley.” Her deep wrinkles belie an era when sunscreen hadn’t been invented yet and when die-hard skiers were committed to skiing every single day of the season without even thinking twice about it. Her eyes seem to convey a spiritual link to the snow that can only be bonded after countless fast powder runs. Fortunately, I detect a slight playful wink that indicates she has already determined that I am one of her kind.

“Well, you interested?”

“Uh, yeah. But I have to be honest,” I hesitate to use the word ‘honest’ because it’s a word that always seems to wreak career havoc. Nonetheless, I spill my guts onto the table:

“I’m in love right now with a beautiful artist whose rental car I need to return to the airport and who wants to come out to visit me sometime this winter but the lodge where I was working doesn’t allow ‘work guests’ during the season, she still has more more year of #college, and I just can’t imagine life without seeing her, and I promised myself a gap year after my #BFA — so what should I do?”

A pregnant pause hangs in the air after my run-on sentence finally sputters to a desperately clinging halt. I half expect ice to rime her brow followed by a cold dagger shot from her fingertip into my heart. Instead, her gruff demeanor changes to a loving, golden frown and she leans forward in the dramatic sort of way that #cowboys do at the crux of their favorite time-worn campfire tale.

“See that picture over there?” She asks, gesturing to the largest frame on the east wall.

The photo is the most passionate shot of two skiers I’ve ever seen. In lockstep with each other and leading a swirling rooster tail of snow, the couple charges forward in that old leather-boot style of skiing that transcends aggression with athletic fervor.

“That’s me and my husband Jim.”

Her chest fills with a puff of air as she prepares to offer her sage counsel. “We built this place. I know what you’re going through. Yes, your girl can come out here to visit this winter. And you can clock in tomorrow morning.

But you’ll need to cut that hair.”

? I catch myself looking around for a pair of scissors.

“Jim’ll give you a tour of the lodge right now.”

Just then a strong man wearing dark green polarized plastic sunglasses (indoors!) pushes through the kitchen galley as though he were on cue in a movie set. His upper body is shaped like a pickle barrel and is supported by legs that taper down to his ankles as though they were adapted strictly to the requirements of mountain mobility.

“Jim,” is the introduction he offers as he crushes my hand, turns on his heels, and quickly exits the room in order to show me their lodge at the base of his snowy alpine throne.

“Let’s go.”

Like a mantra, I dumbfoundedly repeat back to him, “Let’s go.”

Knocking my chair over, I blindly step in line to follow Mr. Jim Shane,** one of the many #humblebrand legends of @alta-ski-area. And one of my two new bosses.

Hired.

______

* Lead singer Ian Brown has claimed that the song is about how individuals want to be idolized and how we would do anything to attain that goal. Is this author’s idealized pursuit of #skiing any different by requiring a haircut?

** Other Jim Shane #resume notes:

• He made the first North Face ascent of the Grand Teton’s East Ridge with Harold Gudro in 1953. It required a bivouac and 50+ pitons.
• “Shane’s Chute” is his eponymous couloir on Mount Superior (photo).