Not Exactly Norman

Ski towns are a bit like college towns. Many people come in for the winter season and leave as soon as the grass turns green. Many people also arrive and stay for several years before moving on to other towns and other pursuits. In an industry that tends to be peopled with itinerant sensation-seeking young people anyway, there is little permanency in mountain-sport focused communities.

One particular result of this itinerant condition is that the holidays take on a not-particularly-Norman-Rockwell composure. In some ways this means that there is something missing from the substance of our celebrations – we do, after all, work all the way through the periods on the calendar when the rest of the world vacations. It also, however, means that we can celebrate some traditionally family-oriented holidays with a focus on the substance on the celebration rather than, for example, the logistics of assembling myriad family members with the requisite stresses and intrigue.

Please don’t read anything into this statement – I do very much enjoy when my entire family can get together at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. However, even in the healthiest and most loving of families, when the kids all have grown up and left the house to start their own families, there’s always a certain amount of stress to be found in putting them all back into the house for a few days.

Every other year, my siblings celebrate Thanksgiving at their various in-laws’ houses and my parents and I are left to fend for ourselves. Each of the last few of these “off-years” we’ve held Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment here in Ludlow, Vermont. In each of these years also, we’ve been lucky enough to have assorted non-family guests join us for the festivities. This year was no exception, and it always emphasizes the real importance of the holiday. We give thanks for the people who are important to us and enrich our lives – both those present and those absent, those that have been in our lives since we entered this world and with those that are new acquaintances, young and old, friends and colleagues, American and foreign, skiers and snowboarders, instructors and coaches, all hosted by my parents incomparable hospitality in full flower (even though it is my house and I get the credit) and who invariably are resplendent in their Dale of Norway sweaters.

In ski towns, people come and go. Some of them are friends whose company we enjoy for a season or two and then move on, and some are friends who we take with us and occupy a special place in our hearts, whether we see them again or not. We grow as people, and at Thanksgiving we give thanks for that growth and the experiences we’ve shared above and beyond skiing and snowboarding. Then, still under the effects of the tryptophan, we ski and ride on Friday morning.

I hope each of you has had a great Thanksgiving, whether celebrated with your families or elsewhere. Now it’s time to get down to the serious fun of winter.