Rocky Mountain High, Why Did I Ever Leave?

My third and final response to Logan Silkwood’s Two Truths and One Lie Writing Challenge

I was always an impatient academic nerd. I got out of prep school with a year and a half of college credits under my belt and took a full year’s worth of credits during the Spring Semester of my freshman year. At the end of the Fall Semester of my junior year, I was done. I had a long harbored fantasy of going out to the mountains of Colorado and being a ski bum for one full season. This was my chance. Armed with a brand-new Mazda RX-2 and $750 I had saved from working during the summer, I headed off to Aspen with two college friends in the middle of December after my last exam. When I got there, the first thing I did was to plop down $250 for a season ticket. No matter what else happened that winter, I would be able to ski every day. I knew that the remaining $500 was not enough to last me for the season, so I looked for a side job to supplement my meager savings.

I did a stint as the film projector operator at Snowmass. I saw The Last Run, starring George C Scott, so many times I could recite every line by heart. I was a photographer for Mountain Photography for a while. Every morning I would go up on the mountain and put out my banner inviting the tourists to ski by, and I would take their picture. They would be displayed at the bottom of the mountain…