Snowboarding Put Me in Debt but Gave Me Something Priceless
By: Miguel Machado
Tags: Race, Money, Sports, Snowboarding, Outdoors

Snowboarding Put Me in Debt but Gave Me Something Priceless

My cousin and me in more than a stack’s worth of gear each. Photos courtesy of the author

Winter mornings in Vermont hit different — always have.

At 6 a.m., the sun is but a whisper on the peak of the mountain. The towers of pine are weighed down beneath a midnight silhouette. The cold — the kind that shoots down into your lungs and then splinters — makes its presence known in the fog that builds against windows. And then, slowly and quietly, shadows emerge from the resort. Some contort themselves into yoga stretches, others huddle over coffee, but they’re all bound by a devotion to the mountain.

I started snowboarding in my early twenties. Before that time, I’d had no interest in what I’d considered “White boy sports.” Much to my mother’s chagrin, I was perfectly content spending my mornings sleeping in and my nights on the stoop with a bottle and the boys.

But my mother had remarried into a skiing family. And every year, as the trees manifested embers of leaves that would eventually leave branches bare, she’d call up and see if I wanted to join the family on a weekend ski trip. My response was always the same: “I don’t do that shit.”

Something changed shortly into my mid-twenties, though. New York City and all its good times seemed to grow more limiting. My 21st birthday left me hungover, my eye swollen shut, and a box-cutter slice near my right temple. (Never drunkenly try to fight six people, especially when one warns you they have a knife.) After a couple more years of drinking with diminishing returns, I was ready for something different. And then one weekend, my mother reached out with another invitation promising just that.

She said there would be a hot tub and beer — that was good enough for me. I figured I’d lounge around the lodge or something, maybe hop on a board just to see what it was all about. But that weekend not only changed how I felt about snowboarding; it changed my outlook on life.

From the moment I felt the bite of hard-packed, icy snow on my tailbone, I knew snowboarding would be different. I was no longer the passive observer.

It’s strange to hit your twenties and realize that you’ve never really experienced nature before. Sure, as children, my cousins and I looked forward to summer excursions at the Rockaways and frolicked in the rough break until our lips turned purple. We spent trips in Puerto Rico marveling at how the jungle seemed to swallow even the most metropolitan of areas. But these experiences were characterized by their passivity: We took in nature but ultimately remained apart from it.

From the moment I felt the bite of hard-packed, icy snow on my tailbone, I knew snowboarding would be different. I was no longer the passive observer. All around me, the cold closed in. Mountain peaks crested like distant waves and hinted at areas hidden behind thickets of snow-covered pines, sealed off behind danger I didn’t yet have the skill to navigate. But those peaks held a promise that when I did, I would no longer be at the mercy of the elements but a part of them. In the days that I did not make the nearly six-hour drive to the mountain, this promise became an obsession.

Before I started snowboarding, the city had been unbearable during winter because of the cold and snow. But now it became unbearable when I couldn’t snowboard. The streets seemed grayer and more lifeless as I realized how wrong I had been about the idea of “White boy sports.” In believing the narrative that the great outdoors weren’t for people of color, I’d essentially written myself out of it. And so, I made up my mind to write myself back in.

On a particularly gray and listless Saturday, I phoned my cousin to ask if he was down for something different. I suspect he was at a similar crossroads in his fading love affair with the city because he said yes almost immediately.

Two hours later, we found ourselves at Hunter Mountain; I taught him the snowboarding basics I barely knew myself. I watched him fall for hours. But with each tumble, something began to click. The pain, the sore muscles, the frostbitten fingers — it all comes together to make the experience more vivid until there is nothing else you’d rather be doing, no place you’d rather be. I’d effectively passed on the obsession to my cousin, and together we started to discover that the great outdoors belonged to us.

But if snowboarding had given me a newfound appreciation for nature, it had also given me an unsustainable habit, and I quickly found myself in debt. It’s the other part of the outdoor intersectionality narrative. Sure, I’d written myself back into nature. But how long could I afford to stay there? It’s a conundrum that many working and lower-middle-class families face: having the desire to pursue an activity but not the means.

I was fortunate. For years, my stepfather maintained my stints on the mountain; he knew its importance. He was the one who rented the cabins and paid for that first lesson that started everything because he knew that money was the biggest obstacle. He also knew that what he had given me — and what I’d extend to my cousin and him to his brother and so on — was the gift of tradition. We now had a ritual, a passion that would age with us and allow us to experience a different world.

Above the clouds at Mount Hood. Might as well be Jupiter.

But my time in that world would be limited. Whatever my step-pops couldn’t be on the hook for I made up for with fiscal irresponsibility. Everything went on the credit card to pay off further down the line: $800 lift passes, $500 snowboards, gear, boots, food, gas. But for every lump-sum monthly payment, there was an escalating number of charges until, finally, I just couldn’t afford the habit anymore.

I watched my season dwindle from a high of 26 days on the mountain to 10 to five to maybe one here and there.

But even though I got to snowboard less frequently, the desire to be in nature remained. So I began to look for activities that would keep me there. I started hiking more, driving out to Long Island or up the Hudson for good ones. On a trip to my grandmother’s hometown of Isabela, Puerto Rico, I took up surfing. It provided the same connection to nature that snowboarding did but at a fraction of the cost. Eventually, I moved out to PR full time.

Similar view to the previous picture but free.

Now, my days are spent loading up my beater station wagon and pointing it toward the gaping maw of the jungle, seeking out caves or secluded surf spots beneath the ardent Caribbean sun. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss winter, that I didn’t miss the mountain.

I miss those Vermont mornings. My cousin and I reminisce about the black-coffee-fueled night drives up I-95 and the hikes just beyond the lift chair to find untouched terrain. Those were good times. But for me, it’s more than just nostalgia.

Snowboarding came into my life at a time when God was leaving it. Becoming an atheist was liberating but also a bit jarring. I’d gone from believing in something almighty to believing in nothing. In that absence, the sport showed me that there were still things bigger than myself. And when it became prohibitively expensive, rather than lose that perspective, it simply pushed me further into nature, to seek out those lonely places where God was just another word for the mountain or the pine. And because of that, I’m sure I’ll return to it.

I don’t expect snowboarding to get cheaper suddenly. But I’m at the stage in my life where I understand that, sometimes, a little more effort can yield a much greater reward. Mountain resorts are convenient places to find yourself in the midst of nature. But where the resort stops, the real mountain begins; the only price of entry is how far your legs can carry you or how long you can stand the cold. And in the search of that — those lonely places — we just have to hike a little farther past the lift.