We crested one of the many mountains and paused to take in the scenery from the top. A cool wind hissed through the Ponderosas, and a nearby Magpie added its gravelly call to the ambience. Dad and I stepped out into the sun to appreciate where we were. Together, we stood just a foot or so from a near-vertical dropoff into the Ponderosas below, and Dad pointed out a small, distant ski mountain.
"You see that little bare patch of snow on that mountain?" he asked.
"Yeah?"
"That's Echo mountain. Wanna give skiing another shot there? It's an easy run!"
"Nah, I'm good." I shook my head.
"Oh c'mon!" Dad teased, "You can't be that bad at skiing. Just give it one more try. I'm sure you'll figure it out."
"Last time I went skiing, I slid all the way down the mountain in Breckinridge in the pizza position and couldn't walk for an hour."
"Well, unlike Clarke, I'm not just gonna stick you on the lift and send you down the mountain without some practice." my dad rolled his eyes.
"Fine. I will think about skiing this coming season." I muttered.
"Yes!" my dad shouted, his voice echoing through the mountains and scaring off the annoying Magpie, "I will get you a pair of skis for this coming season, too. I'll spend some money on them so you'll feel bad if you don't use them."
"Wait? What?" I glared.
My dad laughed and headed back into the jeep, never clarifying his promise to buy me expensive skis to guilt-trip me into trying skiing again.
The jeep rattled and roared to life just as I slammed my door shut, and we continued on our journey back down the mountain. After a few hairpin turns, we rounded a wide bend and came across an abandoned mine quarry, with white and yellow shale tailings nearly burying half of the structure.
"Behold!" my dad began, "Pewabic mountain!"
"What mountain?!" I raised my eyebrows.
"Pewabic mountain." Dad replied.
"Oh. I thought you called it something else..." I giggled.
I could feel the disappointment in my dad's eyes as he gave me a serious side glare. He then reached to turn the Blutooth speaker up till all we could hear was Ray Wylie Hubbard singing "Outlaw Blood", over the rattling Jeep and roaring wind. I sat back and rested my right arm on the windowsill, knocking my fist against the metal door to the beat of the music.
The road soon turned from washboarded dirt to cracked and potholed asphalt, and the thick Ponderosas and Grand Firs cleared up revealing a mostly abandoned mining town. Some structures were reduced to rubble from years of neglect and rough weather, but many still stood, though barely. Of course, Dad and I had to stop and explore a little bit, though we still obeyed the bullet-laden No Trespassing signs stuck to nearly every post and doorframe we saw. We may have been the only two living beings within a ten mile radius, but it wasn't worth the risk of being shot at by some shotgun-brandishing mountain man to explore some of those rickety mining buildings further, no matter how tempting it was.
