Montana Mountain High

I am in Montana, somewhere south of Bozeman and north of Yellow-stone, where a bit of the Wild West still remains. Outside runs the Gallitan river where the movie A River Runs Through It was filmed half a mile upstream. About five miles down the pike is the local's bar, a place where you can still order buffalo burgers. Every vehicle parked outside it is a 4x4 full of mud and rust, because in Montana people use their 4x4s for more than commuting to and from the office.

Traveling to Montana is a little bit like rebelling. There is no daytime speed limit. I have yet to see a traffic light. The only government agency in the county is the post office. Out here people look after themselves, mean what they say and live free.

Driving every morning down a canyon road to the mountain I ski at brings me out of Montana and into another world, a world full of people I love to hate. From the arrogant smugness of the man sporting the Vail hat to be the spoiled kids who whine about the bad food, this ski resort, like all ski resorts, is populated by 2 percent locals and 98 percent out-of-town skiers.

At lunch time everyone crowds into the few closely spaced picnic tables, forcing neighbors to overhear each other's lunch time conversation. Inevitably, the table next door is populated by the Lewis family from Minneapolis. Three kids, aged 9, 13 and 15, sit across from mom, a secretary, and dad, a financial analyst. The two older kids have braces. Their father sports a pot belly and a cell phone.

Each family member wears a distinctive name-brand ski jacket that is ranked in a hierarchy somewhere between North Face and Columbia. Likewise, each carries a distinct pair of skis custom-fitted to match the specialized needs of these upper-middle class patrons of the latest and greatest in ski equipment.

Overpriced resort food (which is usually left for someone else to clean up) serves as an excellent medium to discuss the morning's adventures. Conversation centers on how good or bad the snow is (usually worse than it was at Aspen last year) and how much better the new pair of skis are (as if the latest model really makes a difference for someone who's greatest accomplishment on skis happens to be their participation in the feat of engineering designed to haul them up the hill).

Juxtaposed against these movers and shakers on spring break are the lift operators, ski patrol and resort workers: the locals. These tough and hardy souls sacrifice their "earning potential," as we would say in Harvard vernacular, for something we don't have: 120 days of skiing a year in the peace, beauty and allure of the mountains.

Of course this job comes with definite drawbacks. It is here where the esteem society places on different professions translates into snobbery. Many resort guests constantly be little resort workers, failing to act kindly towards or even acknowledge those paid by the hour. They (and sometimes we) are too busy enjoying the fruits of their labor to act with common decency. But on the whole, a local's life of powder, blue skies and simplicity is appealing to someone who swims in problem sets and essays even while on vacation.

So here I am in perhaps the most free state in the Union, exercising my measly seven days of vacation by skiing out West, wondering why I don't join this esteemed crowd of freeloaders and ski right though second semester. In recognizing this desire, I am forced to acknowledge a deeper question. Since the closest I will ever get to being a "local" is as a spring break visitor, who will I be in 30 years?

In the resort guest's propensity to write off the lives of the locals as insignificant in comparison to their own grandiose existence, they sometime forget that the freedom locals have is precisely what they lack. These pompous guests I see every day at the ski resort are people for whom freedom was traded for money, success and one week of skiing a year. These are people we are in danger of becoming.

In some sense our lives are not ours anymore. We, each to different degrees, have signed them away to higher goals of prestige and fame, to which Harvard is our current stepping stone.

The baggage I brought on vacation serves as testimony to this unpleasant reality. Among four of us there are three computers. Three. Even worse is our behavior. E-mail has been checked. Text-books are out. In the evenings work goes on while the locals live.

I hope that's not what all these consulting and investment banking jobs are about. I hope we choose our careers and focus our lives on something more than making enough money to be "free" to pursue things we enjoy, like skiing on spring break. Because if freedom is our goal, but we think money and glory is the path, I can suggest an entirely more useful course of action.

Travel to Montana. Go somewhere south of Bozeman and north of Yellow-stone along the Gallitan river.

Christopher M. Kirchhoff '01 resides in Holworthy Hall.