🏔️ seventeen minutes

Originally published on Dec 29, 2020

It’s still dark out. Though the sun has technically risen, the mountains still hold us within the embrace of their shadows. All is quiet except for the steady beeps and hums of the machinery of a mountain town – snowplows, snow machines, shovels.

I get ready as quietly as I can – knowing I have minutes, maybe an hour if I’m lucky, to myself. I skirt past the girls’ room, pop my head in to see the outlines of two little girls curled up around each other, their bodies at rest before a day full of movement and energy.

I pad over to the front door and slip on all of the gear – jacket, snow boots, mittens, toque. And yes, my mask. I open the door as quietly as possible, praying to the door gods to not wake anyone.

Success. I plod down the stairs and push the door open into the fresh mountain air. All alone, I tug my mask down so that I can inhale deeply.

There it is. Life. Calm. Peace.

Maybe it’s just the air. Maybe it’s because I grew up in winters like these. But there is muscle memory in these achingly crisp, cold mornings. The ones where your eyes sting a bit from the cold and the air hits your windpipe with an edge before it warms up. Little clouds puff in front of my face, keeping me company as I walk out of our building and into the square.

All is quiet. There are solitary groups of early skiers – determined to be in the front half of ferociously long lift lines in the age of COVID and capacity restrictions. I walk towards the skating rink and pause. A solitary figure has decided to jump the fence and is doing laps in the weak light of dawn.

I wonder what her story is. Her strides are tentative but determined – no pro here, wanting just a clean sheet of ice before the hoards descend. No, rather it seems like someone intent on becoming better but in the privacy that only comes from the bookends of the day. She does a lap and pauses. Starts again.

I respect that. Doing a thing that doesn’t come easy or natural but doing it anyway. That’s a thing I want my girls to grow up with – that kind of work ethic.

I leave her to walk towards my coffee. At this hour only the Starbucks is open so I angle myself that way. The snow plows have done their job well so it’s a clear walk. I pass by the snow machines spraying plumes of snow into the sky so that it may settle into a fresh layer of power on the kids sledding hill, filling in for what mother nature didn’t fully replenish overnight.

I pull up my mask as I walk into the Starbucks and grab our coffees. Back outside I look up at the horizon. That’s when I first see it.

The faintest of blush tinging the sky. I look closer – convinced I’m imagining it. No – there it is. Threaded within the mist and the clouds.

As I walk by the bakery and see the final preparations before opening I have an intense craving for fresh bread and jam. But there are still 10 minutes until opening and so I sit down on a ledge and I watch the sunrise.

And oh, what a reward for taking 10 minutes in my day. Something that I almost never do in my day to day.

In the span of these minutes the sky breaks open with both the most intense orange and the most delicate of pinks. The kind of sight you need to share with someone else and yet there is no one else around.

But just then, the bakery opens and the women walks out to set up the sign and the take out window. And I see the precise moment she looks up and does a double take. She looks at me and says “Did you see the sky?” I nod, the same wonder reflected in my eyes – happy that this is something special even for a local.

She yells out to the rest of the staff that they have to come out and see this. Out come others. A man with his dog coming for bread laments how he decided to leave his phone at home and wishes he had a camera.

And there is it is. This most human of interaction. I don’t know any of these people. Will likely never see them again. But for a minute, we’ve all shared something special that is only ours.

This is what this year has stolen from me most. But man am I thankful to have realized exactly how important it is for me. How vital and fundamental.

I find magic and wonder and energy in the smallest, most mundane moments of life. I love to write about them in a way that brings others along for the adventure.

And so, as I walk back into the apartment, already hearing the cackles and shouts from those two little girls now enjoying their morning cereal, I whisper a little thanks. For the joy of this morning. For the reminder that though my soul misses far flung places with a deep intensity, that what I need is actually right here in front of me, just waiting to be seen.

For seventeen minutes.