Evenings in the yurt alternate from jam sessions with camp guitars and harmonicas to quiet story telling and listening. And though I never play cards, we play cards. For hours. And because backpack weight is an issue, “Tangeritas” are the cocktail of choice. Even tequila-spiked concoctions of melted snow and Tang taste good in a yurt.
Elegant round structures with wood lattice frames and circular roofs, held tight with steel cable and covered with insulation and treated canvas and plastic, modern yurts are surprisingly comfortable in negative temperatures. A wood-burning stove quickly heats the 16-foot diameter structure.
“It’s like living in a Mongolian cathedral,” John likes to say.
A designer/builder, John is the owner of Alternative Home Builders. He uses a portable, solar-powered trailer to power the tools on his job sites. The guy knows his buildings, in other words, and he knows smart construction when he sees it. Prehistoric, portable tents from central Asia have an intuitive appeal.
The first thing John ever said to me was “What tools do you have?”
Not many, it turned out. John hired me anyway as a semi-skilled laborer at $7 an hour (under the table!), and over that winter, we built his client a super-insulated custom strawbale home with Traumbe walls. (He also constructed a self-sustaining Earthship for his family in Gallina Canyon north of Taos. The roof funneled all the household’s water into a cistern, and solar collectors and a bank of batteries provided all the building’s power needs. Massive, bermed, earth-filled tire walls kept the internal temperatures a steady 65–70 degrees in the dead of winter and the blaze of summer.)
I bought the tools I needed, worked like a dog in freezing conditions, and earned John’s favor. He wore a sweat-stained cowboy hat and would gesticulate with his calloused hands that looked like pieces of bark, angular and dark from the sun. He’s only three years older than me, but John had cracked 30, and that felt like a big deal at the time. He was a foreman for Earthship architect Mike Reynolds, and I was passionate about alternative building techniques and wanted to construct my own home (which I have yet to do). An itinerant Permaculturalist/Outward Bound instructor/ski patroller, I was idealistic to a fault. John was much the same but had figured out a degree of permanence and prosperity that I craved.
On the weekends, we’d climb Kachina Peak and bomb down the slopes of Taos Ski Valley. We lived for the athletic and artistic essence of the sport, and seeing that total conviction in someone else was liberating. Skiing is communal that way. You watch your friends ski and put on a show for them. Who can carve the sweetest line? An exchange of power, balance, and creativity with the mountain, with the snow, skiing is also an exchange with those you ski with. Watching someone be so happy, then repeating that experience yourself, will change your priorities. It did mine, at least.
There’s another thing with John, too. He lost one of his older brothers, Peter, to a skiing accident in New Zealand. I’ve known several people who have died pursuing the sport’s outer edge, but John’s loss is incalculably more profound. Sometimes it’s depression and sadness that claim young people’s lives, and sometimes it’s flying too close to the sun. John and his brothers grew up in Boulder’s Four Mile Canyon, and his mom’s Kansas grandparents were one of the 15 families that founded the Switzerland Park enclave near Nederland in 1904. John ski patrolled at Eldora and later at Snow Basin, Utah. In 2008, he went back to patrolling at Taos (where his peers voted him Patroller of the Year in 2009-10). I like to think that our backcountry skiing together has allowed John to assume the big brother roll for me, to somehow embody Peter for a little brother.
John Hunt just turned 45 years old and has the gray beard of the winded, old dudes we’ve occasionally invited to the yurts with us. John’s puppy grew up, got old, and died. Now his new dog is getting old, too, and my second kid is on the way. I was the first to buy fat skis and plastic boots. John finally abandoned three pin bindings for spring-loaded Hammerheads. We’ve changed. The ski industry has changed. But, thankfully, the yurts and the mountains remain the same.
We’ve already booked our weekend for this year.
Philip Armour is a freelance writer and the editor of American Cowboy magazine. He hasn’t tried skijoring yet, but it’s on the bucket list.
For more information about the Southwest Nordic Center, visit their website or call 575-758-4761.
