from a song written 40+ years ago . . .
STEVE SKINNER WRITES: I feel so lucky that I stumbled into Aspen. It was a beautiful accident. I didn’t know where I was going. I hadn’t really been anywhere, but when I came over the pass in the summer of 1982 I was lured in by the air, the town, the people on the street and more than anything else, Aspen Mountain. I was looking for a place to ski and my heart sped up just looking at the steep runs spilling right into town.
You may be inured to Aspen Mountain by now, not even looking up as you walk in her shadow. Maybe you take skiing the perfect fall lines for granted. Perhaps you have never been the first slider to fly down Copper or Spar, the wind the only thing slowing your dance with gravity on untouched corduroy. Have you enjoyed your own line in the woods on an unhurried powder day? I used to pinch myself riding the first lift on a mellow weekday, whether heading to work at Bonnie’s or just going for a few morning runs.
Before the advent of modern ski technology, I always felt at home on a pair of 207-cm giant slalom skis like K2 812s. If you were brave enough, strong enough and crazy enough to point them down the fall line, you were rewarded with a sensation of plummeting down, down, down. It’s addictive! Sure, I was a very good free skier but there was always someone that went flying past when I was flying down S-1.
I remember blasting down Aspen Mountain and getting into line at Little Nell only to be approached by patrol. “I counted the amount of turns you made up there and I didn’t get up to one.” You gotta love the ski patrol. Keeping a sense of humor while trying to do a job.
For me, at first, life in Aspen was all about the skiing. Finding an affordable place to live in the early 1980s was an absolute piece of cake and I hopped around town in various housing situations ranging from funky to really funky. You wouldn’t recognize the place.
It took my parents a while to understand why I had left California and a potential career in Silicon Valley to live as a ski bum in a hopelessly beautiful place. When they came to town in 1996 to witness my rock opera, “Umbrella Man,” in front of a sold-out audience at the Wheeler Opera House, they saw what I saw: a land of endless potential and opportunity; a place steeped in talent, magic and mystery.
After that, even when I was clinging to the valley, living oh so downvalley in Carbondale, my mother would proudly introduce me to her friends, “This is my son Steven, from Aspen.” That was her fantasy. Because almost everyone has heard of Aspen, the famous ski resort with glittering celebrities and specials on TV.
Aspen Mountain is still the gemstone that attracts and compels all who come here. Now that a chill is in the night air, the leaves will turn gold, orange, even red, and the aspens will put on another show. This quickens the pulse for those anticipating a season dedicated to making turns in this heady place.
There’s a big old mine (Ajax) inside Aspen Mountain and before all the vents were closed up, I went down there, exploring with a little flashlight and a willing friend who discovered a way in. There are caverns, tracks, wooden ladders and mining remnants down there right now, everything silent but for dripping sounds and inky darkness.
In 1894, the world’s largest silver nugget was discovered in the Smuggler Mine. The thing was more than 3,000 pounds and had to be cut into three pieces just to get it out of the mine. Unfortunately for those miners, the value of silver had plummeted and the rock was mostly a novelty.
The crashing of the silver market in 1893 was probably the best thing to happen to Aspen as the smelters that once filled the town with toxic smoke were squelched and the land started to heal. Hard men driven by the prospect of getting rich from the ground were lured elsewhere by their greed and lust. What would they make of seeing the mountain covered in snow with beautiful people in stretch pants and one-piece dayglow outfits shooshing down carefully gladed slopes, white smiling teeth flashing like beacons? What a transformation!
I fell in love with a folk singer named Christine Lavin who captured the spirit of my early days in town with a song that came out in 1985 called, “Nobody’s Fat in Aspen.”
Oh, Paul is a ski instructor With blond, thinning hair
“My feet freeze everyday on the slopes,” he says, “but I don’t care
“’Cause I get to meet a lot of lonely women, lookin’ for a good time
“They don't mean it when they say they love me . . .but I don't mind.”
’Cause nobody’s fat in Aspen
Everybody eats Brie cheese Disco dances at Tipplers all night
In the daylight strap on skis You can see them gliding down Ajax Mountain
Drinking at Little Nell’s Nobody’s fat in Aspen, Everybody’s so damn healthy"
One night when my band played a gig at what is now Belly Up Aspen, Lavin joined us onstage, spinning a baton from her marching band days. She spun around, tossing it up into the air while people danced on the floor. She must have laughed and laughed at the irony of being back in a town that had inspired her muse like so many others who came before us.
P.S. Steve - if your band needs a twirler . . . who you gonna call???