By admin 
It is an ungodly hour. My dad, probably wearing enormous snow boots, is stomping around the kitchen and back room, organizing gear.
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If I’m awake now, he’s probably been awake for 30 minutes or more. Years later, I’d appreciate the dedication it took for him to rouse my brother and me and drive us two hours from the city to the hill and back after a full week of work. Old Pops meant business.
This time, I’d rather not get out of bed and join him. It’s Saturday or Sunday; a reprieve, usually. Outside, the sky’s dark and the air—often punctuated by zooming cars, screeching tires, or bird calls—is quiet and cold. I could stay in my nest of pillows and blankets until noon.
But I don’t. Either my dad barges in to rally the troops, or I do the honors myself, stumbling into the bathroom and grimly eyeing myself in the mirror as I brush my teeth. We’re going skiing, and being the scrupulous ski family that we are, we plan to arrive before the lifts open and the traffic piles up.
Early on, those morning commutes involved a kind of teleportation. I’d wake up briefly before collapsing into the car and closing my eyes again. When I’d reopen them, everything was different.
Sloppy Pacific Northwest flakes zipped past while the windshield wipers groaned and squeaked and held open a window through the muck so that my faithful pilot, my dad, could see. Winter in the lowlands meant dull, oppressive grayness that you could only escape a few ways, and we weren’t, most years, going somewhere hot—our usual out involved gaining altitude.
With that different, exciting scenery promised, it didn’t take long for my grumpiness to wear off. Whenever the rain-slick concrete gave way to emerald green pines heaving under the weight of new snow, I knew, even if it may not have really been my decision when I was younger, that I made the right choice to wake up.
Eventually, the keys got passed to me. Semi-alert behind the wheel, I came to understand that I’d been let into a certainly-not-secret but nonetheless exclusive club. The barrier for entry wasn’t a ski pass or a big, gas-guzzling car. Rather, for entry, you needed a reason to wake up at the ass crack of dawn, jam the key into your ignition, and go somewhere.
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Most people don’t have a reason. I certainly wouldn’t have. Beyond insomniacs and night owls, the early hours aren’t for the half-committed. You enter the space between day and night because of a paycheck, a bender, or, in the case of skiers everywhere, a zealous parent who thinks, hopefully, that they’ll eventually pass their low-grade insanity onto their children.
That strategy worked on me. Friends in high school poked fun when I missed hanging out to go skiing, and it was true that I’d fallen in love with snow. But with a driver’s license obtained and the big blue family car under my command, I also began to relish venturing out into those darkened streets. The freeways were empty. Gas stations and fast food joints glimmered like lighthouses, beckoning sailors—hungry teenagers who don’t mind eating garbage, really—to stop in. Everything hummed with what had happened and what could happen next. As a kid whose brain moved too quickly, I realized I felt best when the world stopped moving.
Most times, my copilots or I would pick a conversation topic—which skier has the best style or is the Big Mac the platonic ideal of a hamburger—and start blabbing. It could last the whole drive or end quickly. These were among my best friends, and while having more packed into the car was good, one buddy in the passenger seat could be even better. It may as well have only been the two of us out there, cutting through the gloom. Sometimes we went deep. Sometimes we didn’t. Either way, by the time the mountain finally crept over the dashboard, I knew this person better. We were closer.
But as the driver, I was often left alone as my passengers snoozed. That’s also fine. A captain must still helm the ship. I’d have my phone plugged into the car stereo to dispense tunes and a steaming thermos next to me. The absence of banter and the half-focus required by driving induced a borderline-meditative state, a break from the flurry of real life. My thoughts drifted freely, settling on questions, challenges, and hopes. For hours, I had nothing to do but think. Or, gloriously, think about nothing at all as my eyes flicked from the odometer to the rearview mirror.
When I moved out for college, skiing became more convenient, and those long-haul excursions vanished. A new home after that included a nearby ski area, too, meaning a 10 a.m. Saturday departure wasn’t unreasonable. I could go skiing whenever, really, and appreciated that. But the sound of studded tires on concrete still triggers a switch inside me, a call to arms. To find a parking spot, it says, we need to mount up.
I still think of this as an opportunity, not an obligation. Back then, the ski day didn’t start when I clicked in. It began the moment the coffee was hot and poured, and the car engine was alive, grumbling or purring, ready for another journey past skyscrapers and snow drifts and the roadside stop that dispensed the best hot chocolate and through little towns and the sprawling quietude and up the boulevard and towards the place that makes us set our alarms for 5 a.m.
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If anyone wants a ride, call me. I’ll just need a few bucks for gas.
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This story was originally published September 13, 2026 at 3:12 AM.