Weed

The first time I smoked weed was at about 12,000 feet, right on the slope of Birthday Peak. I was wrapped in all the layers I’d brought, squirting against the setting sun. The ground was soaked, damp to the touch and warming slightly under the sun as the clouds parted. Just a few hours before we’d raced up the trail, thunder rumbling around us, the drizzle holding back, tension in the air. The trail was mostly just up, up, up, climbing, sometimes with switchbacks, sometimes turning slightly, lowering here, but always returning to an incline, inviting us higher. We asked every hiker we passed, “how much farther?” starting to worry about the changing weather. Most of them shrugged or answered with an arbitrary distance. We kept walking, listening to the thunder move closer, our steps picking up speed, until we moved into a clearing and the trail finally evened out. We found the first spot we could, near another group, probably thinking that the presence of other living, breathing, speaking beings would keep us safe. 

Right as we set up our tent up, the sky let the tension out and the rain began to pour. We pulled all our gear into the tent, the thunder above us now and the rain splattering against the tent. We pulled our sleeping bags out of our packs, jackets too, anything that could warm us up against the dropping temperatures. 

The next few hours are hazy in my memory since we dropped in and out of sleep, napping in the small space, the ground holding us close as the sky had its way. A couple hours later, I woke to silence, besides some shouts and chatter from the group we’d set up our tent near. It was still early, sunset holding off, and we felt an urge to stir, to keep moving forward. 

“It dropped probably close to 50 degrees,” my cousin exclaimed after we’d crawled out of the tent, all our layers on, zipped up. We found the trail again, sopping with each step, water pooling on the edges and in the mud. We circled the lake that my uncle had found on the map, Kroenke Lake, a spot he’d camped at years before. And then we left the pine trees below us and ascended into the brush, looking for the trail between the shrubs and the snow patches that became more frequent as we got higher. It took my breath away but it also felt like home and I didn’t know how to say that yet so the feeling in my heart stayed hidden, my eyes taking in the peaks around us, and the great height we were at, the possibilities of this world and the potential that this, these mountains, could be here and I could be within them. 

And then my cousin pulled out her tin, with a joint rolled inside it and a lighter and as we started back down the trail, she lit the paper, inhaled deeply, and handed it to me. So there I stood, on the side of Birthday Peak, my eyes fixed on Mt. Yale, surrounded by wildflowers, trying to inhale the weed and understand what I was supposed to be feeling. But really, I kept thinking to myself, “this. This is magic.” 

The second time I smoked weed was in my college apartment, with my friend named for a river, who had seemed to understand some inner part of me from the moment we met. I’m not sure why we’d both decided to smoke but we both thought that Friday evening that that was what we should do. So I texted a coworker who’d bragged about selling weed and asked if he had any and then Ocoee and I got in my car and drove a few blocks and waited on the side of the road until he came out and passed it to us through the window. 

Back in my apartment we tried to decide the best place to smoke and decided on my bathroom, with the vent on, and the windows open. I didn’t have to wonder about the feeling that time but I also didn’t consider that I was actually high, caught up in laughter and then an urgent need to rid my apartment of the smell, pouring grape cleaner onto the kitchen floor, and mopping it up, floating just beyond reality. 

The third time I ever smoked weed was in the trees, snow falling into my eyes, skis at the ends of my legs. It was only my second day on skis. I’d spent the night before a lift operator from the resort, Shawn, in the collection of cabins down the highway where the resort employees lived. He’d made me dinner, and taken me to his bed, and to a party across the parking lot. It was the new year and all the lifties were wild and excited and thrilled by life and snow and the mountains and their alcohol and the people around them. 

I spent that first morning of 2020 with my ski instructor, a retired dentist, who I sometimes consider to be an angel. I can’t remember his name or his face really, and no one else showed up to the lesson, so it was just us as he took me on laps up and down the slope. 

After the lesson, I had lunch with Shawn and he convinced me to ride with him, even though I was still on the easy hill and knew he’d probably rather be storming down Fred’s or Mary’s, two of the mountains at Grand Targhee. Instead, we rode Shoshone over and over, finally getting my feet under me, moving faster and turning with the slope. On one of the descents, Shawn told me to follow him and we went down the far right trail, past the park until he turned left into the trees. We came to a stop in the center of the tall pines, barely able to see the skiers on the other side, flying down the mountain, cheers echoing towards us. 

It was cold and still beneath the trees but my heart was still beating fast and I felt warm within, thrilled at looking my fears in the eyes and at the novelty of the snow and the boy in front of me and the freedom of every decision I was making. And then he pulled out his tin and the joint and his light and even though we were on federal forest land and I was young and had skis on and couldn’t catch my breath, I took it from his hands and inhaled, filling my lungs, or really just trying to and then we were off again, out of the woods, and back into the big white world.