The Other Side of the Mountain

The world outside my window wasn't my world anymore. It was covered in sugar, quiet and deep, waiting.

It wasn’t the sound that woke me. It was the quiet. A deep, heavy quiet that felt like the world was holding its breath. Back in the city, there was never quiet. There was always a hum. Cars, sirens, the rumble of the train, the murmur of the apartment building itself. Here, in the little house my mom and I had moved into three months ago, there were usually night sounds. Wind in the pines. The creak of old wood settling. But this was different. This was a silence that absorbed sound. A cotton-ball silence.

I opened my eyes. The light in my room was wrong. It was soft and gray and had a strange, bluish glow, like the light from a TV screen in a dark room. But the TV wasn’t on. I pushed myself up, my flannel pajamas bunching around my elbows. My breath made a little cloud in the cold air. Mom was cheap with the overnight heat. The floorboards were icy against my bare feet as I padded to the window. I put my hand on the glass and it was colder than an ice cube.

And then I saw it. Snow. Not the slushy, gray stuff that would dust the city for an hour before turning to dirty puddles. This was real snow. A thick, clean blanket of it. It covered everything. The roof of the neighbor’s house, the pointy tops of the fir trees, the street, the car. It wasn’t just on top of things; it had transformed them. The old pickup truck across the street wasn’t a truck anymore. It was a soft, white lump. The fence posts wore tall, puffy hats. The whole world looked like it had been baked from scratch and covered in powdered sugar.

A gasp escaped my mouth, a puff of white against the cold glass. It was magic. That was the only word for it. I’d seen pictures, of course. I’d seen movies. But it was nothing like this. Nothing like seeing the world you thought you knew get completely erased and redrawn overnight. The town of North Peak was already small, already felt like a secret tucked into the mountains, but now it felt like a whole new planet. A snow planet. And I was standing at the very beginning of it.

I pressed my forehead against the window, the cold seeping into my skin. Out there, under all that white, was the mountain. The one that loomed over our town, the reason we moved here. Mom got a job managing the lodge at the ski resort. ‘A fresh start,’ she’d called it. ‘Fresh mountain air.’ For me, it had just felt… empty. The kids at my new school already had their groups, their histories. They’d all grown up together, learning to ski before they could properly read. I was the girl from the city. The girl who didn’t know the difference between a slalom and a mogul. The girl who was always on the outside.

But this… this felt like a fresh start for the whole world. Maybe it could be for me, too. The snow made everything equal. It covered the old paths. It meant you could make new ones. My own tracks. The thought sent a fizz of excitement through me, chasing away the cold. I wanted to be out in it. Not just looking at it. I wanted to feel the crunch of it under my boots. I wanted to fall in it. I wanted to learn to snowboard on it.

That was the promise I’d made myself. If we were going to live on a mountain, I was going to learn the mountain’s language. And its language was speed and snow and a board strapped to your feet. I watched a single, fat flake drift down and land on the railing of our porch. It was perfect. A tiny, six-pointed star. Then another. And another. It was still snowing. The magic was still happening.

I pulled on my thickest socks, a pair of jeans, and three layers of shirts, topping it off with the bright purple winter jacket I’d felt ridiculous buying back in September. It had felt like a costume then. Now, it felt like a uniform. My uniform for this new world. I crept down the stairs, trying not to wake Mom. The house was even colder downstairs. I could see my breath with every exhale.

The front door was hard to open. A drift of snow had piled up against it. I had to put my shoulder into it, and when it finally gave way, a soft cascade of powder tumbled into the entryway. I stepped out, and the cold was a slap in the face. It was sharp and clean and smelled like pine needles and ice. I pulled my beanie down over my ears and took my first step into the new world. Crunch. The sound was so satisfying. I took another. Crunch. I was the first person awake. The first person to mark the clean, perfect sheet of white. I walked a little ways out into the yard, my boots sinking almost to my knees. I was in it. I was really in it.

I tilted my head back and let the flakes land on my face. They were cold and wet against my eyelashes and my cheeks. I stuck out my tongue and caught one. It melted instantly, a tiny taste of nothing and everything. I laughed, a real, loud laugh that was swallowed by the thick, snowy air. For the first time since we’d moved, the ache of loneliness in my chest felt smaller. It was hard to feel lonely when the whole world was giving you a hug.

This was where I would start. Right here. In the quiet, in the cold, in the magic. This was day one.

***.

Signing up for lessons was easy. Convincing my mom was harder. She saw the resort as work. Long hours, grumpy tourists, payroll, inventory. For her, the mountain was a spreadsheet. ‘Are you sure, Cindy? It’s expensive. And you could get hurt.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ I’d promised, pointing at the ‘Beginner’s Package’ on the resort website. ‘It comes with all the gear. And an instructor. Please? I live on a mountain. It’s embarrassing that I can’t even stand up on a snowboard.’ That last part, the part about being embarrassed, was what did it. Mom knew how hard it had been, being the new kid. So she’d sighed, pulled out her credit card, and booked me three days of lessons.

The first day, I was practically vibrating with excitement. The resort was a whole different universe up close. It was loud and chaotic, a jumble of bright colors against the white snow. People swarmed everywhere, carrying skis and boards like they were extra limbs. Music thumped from unseen speakers. The air smelled like fried food and diesel from the snowplows. It was overwhelming and amazing.

After a confusing twenty minutes in the rental shop, I was finally geared up. The boots were the strangest part. They were huge and stiff, making me walk like a robot. The board was wider and heavier than I’d imagined, with a picture of a snarling wolf on the bottom. It felt less like sports equipment and more like a piece of furniture I was supposed to somehow control with my feet.

My lesson group was supposed to meet by a green flag at the base of what everyone called the ‘Bunny Hill.’ It wasn’t much of a hill, more like a gentle slope, but it looked as big as Mount Everest to me. There were a few other first-timers there, a dad with his two small kids, all looking as awkward as I felt. And then our instructor walked up.

He wasn't what I expected. I’d pictured someone older, a cheerful guy with a tan and a permanent goggle line. This was a boy. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. He had a shock of dark hair sticking out from under his helmet and a bored expression on his face. He wasn't wearing the bright red instructor's jacket like the others; he had on a faded black one, the logo of the resort barely visible on the sleeve. He carried his own board, a sleek black thing covered in stickers, with the ease of someone carrying a skateboard.

‘You the beginners?’ he asked. His voice was flat. We all nodded. ‘I’m Rob. Let’s get started. First thing: learn how to fall.’ What a great way to start. Not ‘welcome to the mountain,’ not ‘isn’t this fun?’ Just… ‘learn how to fall.’ He spent a few minutes showing us how to fall backward onto our butts and forward onto our knees and wrists without breaking anything. It was practical, I guess, but not exactly inspiring.

He was all business. His instructions were short, clipped. ‘Knees bent.’ ‘Look where you want to go.’ ‘Weight on your front foot.’ He never smiled. He looked at the snow like it was a boring textbook he’d been forced to read a thousand times. When the little kids in our group would fall and start crying, he’d wait patiently, his face a blank mask, until their dad had calmed them down. He seemed completely disconnected from the joy all around us. How could you be here, in the middle of all this beauty, and look so… bored?

I tried to break through his shell. ‘The view from here is incredible,’ I said, looking up at the jagged peaks sparkling in the sun. ‘You can see everything.’

He glanced up for half a second. ‘Sun’s out. It’ll be icy by two. We need to get this done.’ And he turned back to showing me how to strap my back foot into the binding without sitting down.

I fell. A lot. My first attempts to stand up were a disaster. The board would shoot out from under me, and I’d land hard on my tailbone. Whump. The snow was soft, but not that soft. After the fifth time, Rob came over. He didn't offer a hand. He just stood there, his arms crossed.

‘You’re leaning back,’ he said. ‘You’re scared of sliding. So you lean back. Board shoots out. It’s physics. You have to commit. Point it downhill and trust your edge.’

‘Trust my what now?’ I asked, rubbing my hip.

He sighed, a puff of annoyed air. He nudged the side of my board with his boot. ‘This. Your edge. Heelside. Toeside. It’s what stops you. It’s what turns you. It’s everything. Now get up and try again. But this time, lean forward. Into the fall.’

Lean into the fall. It sounded like a terrible idea. But I did it. I pushed myself up, my muscles already aching, took a deep breath, and pointed the board straight down the tiny slope. For about two seconds, I was standing. I was actually sliding on snow. It was a wobbly, terrifying, and exhilarating two seconds. The world zipped by in a blur of white. ‘I’m doing it!’ I yelled. And then, of course, I caught an edge. The board stopped dead, but I didn't. I pitched forward, face-first into the snow. Whump. A mouthful of cold, wet powder.

I lay there for a second, spitting out snow. I could hear the two little kids giggling. When I pushed myself up, Rob was standing there again. I expected him to be laughing, or at least smirking. But his expression was exactly the same. Blank. ‘Better,’ he said, without a trace of irony. ‘You fell forward. That’s progress.’ He turned and went to help the dad, who had gotten tangled in his own skis. Progress. It felt like a bruise.

We spent the next hour doing the ‘falling leaf,’ a drill where you slide back and forth across the hill on one edge. It was slow and tedious. My legs burned. My everything ached. This wasn't the flying, effortless magic I had imagined. This was work. Hard, frustrating, repetitive work. But every so often, I’d link two slides together. I’d feel the board grip the snow, feel the turn happen under my feet, and for a fleeting moment, I’d get a glimpse of it. The feeling. The freedom.

During a water break, I sat on my board at the edge of the slope, watching the experts on the big runs. They flowed down the mountain like water, sending up huge clouds of snow with every turn. They launched off jumps, spinning in the air. It looked so easy. So fun. It looked like flying. ‘Do you do that stuff?’ I asked Rob, who was standing nearby, texting on his phone. ‘The jumps?’

He glanced up from his screen. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Is it scary?’

‘It’s a job.’ He shoved his phone back in his pocket. ‘Break’s over. Let’s learn to link turns.’

It’s a job. The words echoed in my head. How could this be a job? This was play. This was freedom. This was magic. I looked at his face, really looked at it. There were faint lines of stress around his eyes. His posture wasn’t relaxed; it was tense, coiled. He wasn't a bored teenager. He was… tired. He looked at this winter wonderland, this place I saw as a brand-new beginning, and all he saw was work. A long, hard day at the office. And I couldn’t understand why. My new world was his old chore. Our views of the mountain were as different as night and day. He lived on one side of it, and I was just arriving on the other, and there seemed to be a huge, impassable ridge between us.

***.

By the third lesson, I had graduated from the bunny hill. Sort of. I could link a few clumsy turns, I could stop without crashing (most of the time), and I’d learned the particular agony of catching your toe edge and slamming into the ground like a sack of bricks. My body was a museum of colorful bruises. But I was improving. Rob, in his own way, seemed to acknowledge it. His instructions became shorter, which I took as a sign of approval. ‘Good,’ he’d say, after I managed a whole run without falling. Or, ‘Less skidding.’ It was the most effusive praise I’d ever received.

He decided I was ready for the chairlift. The real one. The one that went halfway up the mountain to the easiest green run. The thought was terrifying. Chairlifts looked like giant, hungry monsters, swinging their chairs around to scoop people up and dangle them hundreds of feet in the air. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, my voice squeaking a little.

‘It’s the only way to get up,’ he said, already sliding toward the lift line. ‘Just watch me and do what I do.’

Doing what he did was impossible. He glided into position with his back foot out of the binding, pushing himself along like he was on a scooter. He looked back to see the chair coming, and then just sat down, smooth and easy, as it picked him up. The safety bar came down with a clang. He looked totally relaxed. My turn.

I shuffled forward, my board catching on everything. It felt like I was trying to herd a wild animal with my feet. The lift attendant, a cheerful guy with a huge beard, gave me a thumbs-up. ‘You got it! Look back!’ I looked back. The chair was coming way too fast. It was a swinging metal bench of doom. I tried to position myself. I panicked. I sort of half-jumped, half-fell backward onto the seat, my board getting caught underneath. The chair scooped me up with a jolt that rattled my teeth. Rob had to grab the safety bar and pull it down himself because I was too busy clinging to the side for dear life.

‘Okay,’ he said, his voice as calm as ever. ‘You’re on. You can let go now.’ I slowly unpeeled my gloves from the cold metal pole. We were already high off the ground. My board dangled from my front foot, feeling incredibly heavy. Below us, other skiers and snowboarders zipped by, looking like tiny, colorful ants. My stomach did a flip. I tried not to look down.

‘So,’ I said, trying to sound casual. ‘This is high.’

‘Yep.’ Rob was looking out at the far peaks, the ones on the other side of the valley. He wasn't even holding on.

The ride was surprisingly peaceful once my initial terror subsided. The world was quiet up here, away from the crowds and the music. All you could hear was the hum of the cable and the wind whistling past your helmet. The view was breathtaking. An endless sea of white-capped mountains under a brilliant blue sky. It was like seeing the top of the world.

‘I’m never going to get tired of this,’ I said, mostly to myself. ‘It’s just… perfect.’

Rob didn’t answer. He just kept staring at the horizon. We were about halfway to the top when it happened. There was a loud clunk from the machinery somewhere above us, and the lift shuddered to a stop. We swayed back and forth for a moment, the chair swinging gently. Then, silence. The humming of the cable was gone. The only sound was the wind.

My stomach leaped into my throat. ‘What was that? What happened?’ I gripped the safety bar again, my knuckles white.

‘They stopped it,’ Rob said, not a hint of concern in his voice. ‘Probably someone fell getting on or off. Happens all the time. It’ll start again in a minute.’ He seemed completely unbothered. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. I, on the other hand, was convinced we were going to be trapped up here forever. Or that the cable would snap and we would plummet to our doom.

We sat there for what felt like an eternity. The silence was huge. It was just us, dangling in the sky. The wind was colder up here, and it was starting to cut through my jacket. To distract myself from the terrifying height and the growing cold, I started talking. ‘It’s quiet here,’ I said. ‘Really quiet. Different from my old home.’

He grunted, a noncommittal sound.

I kept going. Words were better than silence. ‘Back in the city, there’s always noise. You get so used to it, you don’t even notice it’s there until it’s gone. You know? This much quiet feels… loud.’ I looked down at my gloved hands. ‘It’s been hard, getting used to the quiet. It gives you too much time to think.’

That got his attention. He turned his head and looked at me for the first time since we’d gotten on the lift. His eyes were a startlingly clear gray, like a winter sky before a storm.

‘I guess I feel a little like this chairlift,’ I admitted, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. ‘Just… stuck. Dangling. I haven’t really made any friends yet. Everyone here seems to know each other already. I thought maybe… learning to snowboard would help. Help me fit in.’ My voice sounded small against the vastness of the mountain. ‘This place is so beautiful, but it’s a lonely kind of beautiful when you don’t have anyone to share it with.’

I expected him to say nothing. Or to give me another one of his short, clipped answers. But he didn't. He looked away, back toward the distant peaks. His jaw was tight. ‘The quiet doesn't last,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Down there…’ He tilted his head toward the base of the resort, the bustling village area. ‘Down there, it’s never quiet. There’s always someone talking. My dad. Coaches. Sponsors. They all want something.’

Sponsors? I didn't know what to say to that. He was more than just an instructor. He was a serious competitor.

He let out a long, slow breath, and the cloud of it hung in the air in front of him. ‘My dad… he owns this place. Well, part of it. He runs it. And when he looks at this mountain, he doesn’t see the view. He sees lift ticket sales, and grooming schedules, and whether the snow-making machines are working at optimal capacity.’ He mimicked a stuffy, official voice. ‘It’s all about the bottom line.’

‘That must be a lot of pressure,’ I said softly.

He shrugged, but it was a tense, tight movement. ‘It used to be different. Before.’ He stopped. He ran a gloved hand over his knee, a reflexive, unconscious gesture. ‘Before the fall. I was training for the nationals a couple years ago. Big air competition. I… pushed it too far. Tried a new trick. Came down wrong.’ He looked at his knee. ‘Shattered my kneecap. Doctors said I was lucky I could walk, let alone ride again.’

Suddenly, his boredom, his flatness, his clipped sentences—it all made a terrible kind of sense. The mountain wasn’t just a job to him. It was the place that had hurt him. The place where his dreams had almost ended. And now he was tied to it, not by joy, but by duty. By the expectations of his father and everyone else.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. The words felt stupid and small.

He just shook his head, as if to brush it off. ‘I can still ride. I can still compete. But it’s… different. The joy part got lost somewhere on the way down.’ He finally looked at me again, and there was something in his gray eyes I hadn’t seen before. Not boredom. Not annoyance. It was a deep, bone-weary sadness. A loneliness that looked a lot like mine.

Just then, with another loud clunk, the lift lurched back into motion. The sudden movement made me jump, and the spell was broken. We started moving up the mountain again. The conversation was over. We rode the rest of the way to the top in a new kind of silence. It wasn’t awkward anymore. It was… shared. We got off the lift (I almost fell, but not quite), strapped in, and stood at the top of the run. For the first time, Rob waited for me. He pointed with his chin to the trail winding down through the trees.

‘Stay on my line,’ he said. It wasn’t an order. It was an invitation. I nodded, and for the first time, when I looked at him, I didn’t just see an instructor. I saw a boy who was carrying a mountain on his shoulders. And I realized we weren’t on opposite sides of the mountain after all. We were just on different parts of the same, lonely slope.

***.

Weeks passed. Winter deepened its hold on the valley. I kept taking lessons, not in a group anymore, but private ones with Rob whenever he had time between his training schedule and his other duties. My bruises faded and were replaced by muscle. My clumsy falls became less frequent. I learned how to carve, how to control my speed, how to see a line down the mountain instead of just a terrifyingly steep wall of white. The board no longer felt like a wild animal. It felt like a part of me.

Rob and I didn’t talk much about that day on the lift. We didn’t need to. Something had shifted between us. He was still quiet, still reserved. But his instructions were different. He’d show me how to shift my weight to get more power out of a turn, or how to read the texture of the snow to find the fastest line. He was teaching me the mountain’s language, the one he was fluent in. And sometimes, very rarely, when I’d execute a perfect turn, sending a spray of powder into the air, I’d see the corner of his mouth twitch. Almost a smile.

He was training hard for the big local competition, the North Peak Freeride Open. It was the event of the season, and the pressure on him was immense. I could see it in the way he held his shoulders, the way he’d stare up at the steepest, gnarliest parts of the mountain with a look of grim determination. His father was always around, a tall, imposing man with a permanent frown, clipboard in hand, talking to Rob about angles of attack and judging criteria. He never talked about fun. He only talked about winning.

I went to watch the competition. The whole town was there. The atmosphere was electric. A huge crowd gathered at the bottom of the course, a brutally steep run full of natural cliffs and jumps. The music was blasting, and an announcer’s voice boomed over the speakers, hyping up the riders. I found a spot near the finish line, my stomach twisting with a nervous energy that wasn't even mine.

When it was Rob’s turn, a hush fell over the crowd. The announcer yelled his name: ‘And next up, North Peak’s own hometown hero, Rob Martinez!’ I watched the big screen, which showed him at the top, a tiny figure against a huge backdrop of rock and snow. He pushed off. He descended the mountain with a terrifying grace and speed. He wasn’t the bored instructor I had first met. He was an artist. He launched off a massive cliff, spinning twice in the air before landing so smoothly it looked like he’d been placed there by an invisible hand. He flowed through the rest of the course, a blur of black against the white. When he crossed the finish line, the crowd erupted. His score came up on the board. It was the highest of the day.

He’d won. He’d done it. People were cheering, clapping him on the back. His father was there instantly, a flicker of a proud smile on his face before it was replaced by a serious discussion with a man holding a camera. Rob just stood there, leaning on his board, breathing heavily. He looked… empty. He’d won, but he looked like he’d lost something. He caught my eye through the crowd. I didn’t cheer or yell. I just gave him a small nod. He held my gaze for a long moment, then pushed himself through the throng of people and headed toward the lodge, alone.

I found him later, after the awards ceremony and the interviews. He was sitting on a bench away from the main village, just staring at his snowboard, which was propped up against the wall next to him. The plastic trophy they’d given him was on the snow at his feet. He’d taken off his helmet, and his dark hair was damp with sweat. The sun was getting low, and the air was turning sharp and cold.

I walked over and sat down on the other end of the bench. I didn’t say congratulations. It didn’t feel right. We sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the last of the skiers make their way down the mountain. The resort was starting to quiet down. The day was ending.

‘You were good,’ I said finally. It was all I could think of that felt true.

He looked up from his board. He looked at me, and his face was tired, but the tension was gone from his shoulders. He seemed to have made a decision. ‘Come on,’ he said, standing up. He didn’t wait for an answer. He picked up his board and started walking toward one of the smaller, older chairlifts at the far end of the resort, one that was usually closed to the public.

I grabbed my own board and followed him. I didn't ask where we were going. The lift operator, an old man with a face like a roadmap, just nodded at Rob as we approached. He fired up the lift for us. It was just the two of us. The last ride of the day.

This lift went to a different part of the mountain. A quieter part. There were no groomed runs here, just wide-open bowls and glades of trees. When we got to the top, the sun was just beginning to touch the tops of the farthest peaks. The world was bathed in a soft, golden light.

Rob led the way, not down, but across the ridge. We had to unstrap and walk for a little bit, our boots sinking into the deep, untouched powder. He stopped at a small outcropping of rocks overlooking the entire valley. We were far away from the resort now. There were no tracks here but our own. The silence was absolute. It was the same deep, heavy quiet from that first morning I saw the snow.

We sat on a flat rock, our boards resting beside us, and watched the sky. The sun sank lower, and the show began. The blue sky faded to pale orange, then to a fiery crimson that set the underside of the clouds ablaze. The snow on the distant peaks turned from white to gold, then to a soft, rosy pink. It was called alpenglow, I’d learned. The light was so beautiful it hurt to look at. It felt sacred.

We didn’t talk for a long time. There was nothing to say. We just watched the world change color. Finally, as the last sliver of sun disappeared and the colors began to deepen into purple and indigo, Rob spoke. His voice was quiet, barely more than a whisper.

‘My grandfather showed me this place,’ he said. ‘Before he passed away. Before… all this.’ He made a vague gesture with his hand that seemed to encompass the resort, the competition, the pressure. ‘We’d come up here after a big storm. We wouldn’t even ride. We’d just sit. Watch the light change.’

He looked out at the vast, glowing landscape. A real smile touched his lips. Not a twitch, not a ghost of a smile, but a real one. It changed his whole face. ‘He used to say the mountain saves its best tricks for when everyone else has gone home.’ He turned and looked at me, his gray eyes reflecting the last of the day’s light. ‘You were right.’

‘About what?’ I asked.

‘It is magic,’ he said. ‘I guess I just… forgot how to see it.’ In that moment, sitting in the deep quiet on the top of the world, we weren’t an instructor and a student. We weren't the local hero and the new girl. We were just two people, watching a perfect snow day come to a perfect end. He had finally shared his mountain with me, and I had shared my sense of wonder with him. We had found the other side, and it was beautiful.

He picked up a handful of the cold, glittering snow, the pink light shining through the crystals in his glove.

He let it sift through his fingers, watching it fall. The pressure of the day, of all the days before, seemed to fall with it, disappearing into the quiet shadows spreading across the valley. It was just snow again.