Dear Friend,
It’s nearly the end of ski season and my job up on the mountain will soon be over. I will say goodbye to friends I have worked and skied alongside and hope that I see them next season. Hope that everyone will be happy and successful no matter their next season.
This is the grief of seasonal work and nomadic life that counters the joy. For every new thing you see and sweeping vista, a goodbye is lingering. To a place or a person or a way of life. There is celebration for new beginnings and mourning for the normal you’ve grown comfortable with.
I think that always knowing things are about to change can make some people hold back for fear of the impending loss. But for others, it makes friendships quicker and deeper and better through shared experience. It makes views and hikes and climbs and paddles more special because we’ll be somewhere else tomorrow. Sometimes you hide and sometimes you savor. I think we are all both of these people.
I will often talk about how grateful I am that my kids make friends quickly when we stop somewhere new. How especially the youngest will run out the door, hop on her bike, and join the new neighborhood crowd. But I don’t talk as much about how hard it is to pack up and leave, or watch friends leave, when that time is over. Week after week, saying goodbye to new best friends, exchanging friendship bracelets, hoping to see each other down the road. Tears are often shed amidst the excitement over our next destination or activity.
This grief is beautiful in a way, though, as people who live with it are the most aware of how fleeting each experience can be. How nothing will ever be exactly like this again. Even if we stay exactly where we are and do the same thing every day, the world will be changing around us. Good and bad things pass quickly by.
I fall fast and hard for things and places and people, loving them with an intensity that used to embarrass me. But the summer camp-like environments I have found to put myself in more recently are extremely suited to this style of attachment, and really life. I think I’ve said it before, but liking things and liking people shouldn’t be embarrassing. I don’t know when we got the idea that we were too cool or too grown-up for that.
Missing people is okay. Not missing people because you’re busy with your new things and new people is fine, too. It’s messy, right? Always leaving is always going. It is both and it is always both. These two feelings, this joy and grief will always exist alongside one another and one can’t really fully exist without the other. I am happy for new places and for new friends and campfires while also missing a little of every place I’ve been and person I’ve known.
As we prepare to set out for a summer of country roads, concerts, hikes, paddles, and once-in-a-lifetime moments, I’ll grieve a bit of each place and moment we leave behind. I am grateful that this time we are circling back to our new home. But it won’t be the same when we get back. I won’t be the same when we get back. Next ski season will not be the same as my first ski season. I’ll never again feel the magic of flying down the slopes for the first time, never laugh into a face full of powder after wiping out for the first time. There will be new firsts and new people and new excitement. But a little piece will be left behind. Like it always is.
So, friend, I hope your comings and goings are safe and happy as we head into this summer. That you hold a little space to grieve what you leave behind while you look ahead to the new.
See you down the road,
Jamie
Even when you stay in the same place, there are “Hello’s” and “Goodbye’s”. The scenery changes too. Big be buildings going up where houses used to be. More traffic and little parking. I have just chosen to stay in one place