A winter storm hit for three days burying the jagged noses of the Northern Rockies in white.
Whatever last remnants of fall remained in Winter Park, they now sit sleeping under several feet of snow.
The temperatures have vacated anything above 30 degrees, and our lungs inhale the frigid, thin air. It feels like we’re breathing in a strange aura—cold, with a hue of blue.
We can taste it in our breath. The whispers of cold winds, sleepy trees covered in white, and early sunsets that remind the peaks that the sun orbits still higher than their proud faces.
We are learning to embrace this breath with confidence. The unfamiliarity of these mountains, stretching the width of our daily vision, is a panorama we are beginning to know.
The blue veins of mountain trickling underneath the white sheaths of snow do not feel like a view of home. Yet, the familiarity of our landing in Colorado makes it is a place that is starting to feel like a part of who we are.
Tress and I are restless in Colorado…
Dreams are boiling within us like the foundations of a volcano—molten and gaining momentum. We talk often of our direction, our desires, and our dreams. They simmer streams of steam above the crater of our lives like a volcano. Life pursuits quake within us, ready to erupt.
And yet we are on pause for the next 6 months steadied in the Rockies till spring comes. The fires that drive us to accomplish our dreams are being slowed to a soft burn with enough warmth to fall in love a little more each day. We have taken this time out of the natural stream of a young adults life, halting the turning gears of creating an established life, to enjoy being newly wed. In the heart of the mountains we listen to snow fall quietly and we listen to one another more intently, we study each others needs seriously, and we focus on making each other laugh more.
Almost every morning we wake just early enough to see the sun rising over the mountains outside our window before we head to work. This early rise of the day, glimmering golden and red, seeps newness into what we once knew. Waking up next to each other is still new but it is quickly gaining a rhythm.
We walk snowy paths, spired in alpine trees, to a cafeteria, whose food we are not so sure about. There is a beautiful joy in the circumstance in which we walk to breakfast together, even if in the course of a short walk from our apartment to “the commons” the winter air leeches onto our bones and shakes us frozen.
We try and get to breakfast with about an hour of time to spare before work so we can read. Reading is the secret to our liveliness here at Snow Mountain Ranch. It keeps us stimulated, thoughtful, and happy. I (Matthew) am reading early church history, and a new testament survey college textbook, filling my consuming passion for Christianity with some actual evidence and understanding. It is extremely meaningful and valuable to me to be studying the bible and Christian history right now, since I have relied on the dregs of spiritual experience rather than knowledge in my 7 years of Christian experience. These early humble hours, eating soggy hash browns in the commons, have proven to be extremely fruitful for study. Tressa usually gulps down oatmeal and bananas with honey and all sorts of sugary stuff, while reading Jordan Peterson’s “12 rules for life”, an old testament survey college textbook, and the bible.
After breakfast we go to work. ……….. housekeeping……
We are housekeepers. It’s not a job it’s an identity for us. We wear yellow latex gloves and carry crates full of Spic n’ Span and Comet to clean cabins and lodges scattered across the 6,000 acres of Snow Mountain Ranch.
We are housekeepers for 40 hours a week, at a modest pay. We work 4 days a week for 10 hours a pop with 3 days off.
I can’t say that housekeeping is bad, but I also can’t say it makes me happy. The good of stripping beds, stocking cabins, scrubbing toilets, and vacuuming stairs is that almost every day I get to work with Tressa. We clock in together, we fold sheets together, and we ride in the not so capable van together. I spray down the sink while she polishes the wood tables, we flirt a lot, we make little jokes between breaths of Scrubbing Bubbles, we smile at each other, and sometimes we look at each other comfortingly when we just want to leave the task of making a bed and go on a freaking walk in the beautiful sunshine.
We also work with people mostly in their latter teenage years and internationals from Asia, South America, and Europe. You would be amazed at how fast a team of housekeepers can bond over deep cleaning cabins. Our fellow housekeepers are becoming our friends, and we pray often that we would have strength to love them more and point them towards Jesus.
A lot of the times the house keeping crew is a blend of goofballness, angsty sarcastic jokes, growing appreciation for one another, random weird noises, and complaining.
We have a love-hate tangle with the simplicity of housekeeping. On one hand it is extremely straightforward and simple: Clean the toilet, make the bed, work at a decent pace. On the other hand, it is repetitive, and actually pretty physically demanding. I enjoy being able to hear my thoughts when I mop a floor, or pray when i wipe down a window-sill, but then you get to a point when you get annoyed at yourself for thinking so much.
We are thankful we get to work together, we are thankful for the people we work with, yet there are parts of housekeeping that are so frustrating, and sometimes I look up to the sky in the midst of spraying a mirror down and wonder, “How long can we do this?” Then I look outside at beautiful mountains and remember I would never be able to afford for my wife and I to live in a place like this, nor would I be able to afford the copious amounts of snowboarding we enjoy every week.
8am-6:30pm 4 times a week. By the time we’re done each day we are beat. We read often at dinner after work—more New Testament survey textbook and more Jordan Peterson. It pumps intellectual juices into us after a day of redundant housekeeping. After dinner we button our fleeces, pull our beanies down over our brows, and scuttle back to our apartment. Tired, feeling a little dead inside after Housekeeping, we talk about our day, read more, watch lots of movies, look at vans on Pinterest, or journal. Many nights we go to worship practice or some ministry function with A Christian Ministry in the National Park. These things usually go later than my expectation of a bedtime, and I’m having to learn the stamina of doing ministry as a side-job, along with the balance of being human and needing introverted space, as well as this thing we call sleep.
Our circumstances at SMR are really quite amazing, yet there is an underlying tension that we really want to land at a different life, something more consistent and less seasonal. But the truth is where we are at is good for our marriage. We have lots of time with each other with little distraction, we don’t even have to prepare meals we just get to eat together, read together, go to work together, snowboard together, we are always together and it is solidifying us.
Once those 3 days off hit, we thaw out a little. We get free snowboard passes to winter park and we go snowboard for a good chunk of the day on every day we have off. Tress is getting pretty good at carving, and honestly it makes my soul sing to shred around with her. I usually take a few indulging laps down the mountain by myself, to reach max speeds and remember what it’s like to bomb it so fast down the mountain that you realize if you weren’t in control you’d probably break your body. … Man that feels good…
Also, on our days off, we buy coffee that costs us an hour of our paycheck per cup, and we sit around and read, chat, and call friends from home. There is limited time for this because snowboarding seduces us into excessive amounts of turns down the mountain.
Sometimes we forget about our paychecks and go out to eat Indian or Chinese food. (If I were rich I would buy Tressa all the egg drop soup in the world…)
I have to toot my own horn here and add that I take Tressa on dates often, despite the forming ulcer growing in me when I realize I make about $200 a week. I wish I had more time and focus and money to take Tress on extravagant dates. Last week I built a blanket fort in our room and we watched some indie film in it while eating popcorn which I sprinkled with mango chili powder from these Mexican lollipops we bought on our road trip.
Bless her soul… She thought it was great….
With our life in Colorado, and our 6-month time line we are here for, our minds still buzz with a more stable dream. It’s bubbling and steaming into shape that I pray would erupt and form land we can firmly stand on. I hope we stand on a life full of community, a job I love, schooling Tressa will enjoy, and a home, full of enough nature and beauty to sink into.
My prayer for our future plans, despite my dreams and luxurious desires, is “Lord lead me and Tress to place where we will experience the most community and the most loving of our neighbor possible.”
These mountains we are beginning to know. We are beginning to walk in the cold and inhale the winter’s offering with sureness. We are beginning to know Colorado and the caverns of winter park with more familiarity. We are beginning to look at the Northern Rockies and realize they play an important part of our story. Yet, home seems elsewhere, and we long for that.
We look each other in the eyes and we know each other more deeply. We walk with more compassion and understanding alongside one another. We see more of each other’s struggles and we open up our hands a little wider to accept them more graciously. We stand on the peaks of our relationship and view the world from this summit. We rest quietly in the home of each other.