Snow Lessons

“Yes, sir,” I said to you in the Ski Patrol headquarters. We weren’t on a call. This wasn’t even a practice scenario- we were just hanging out. You weren’t my boss in that moment. I knew I’d made a mistake when you looked at me quizzically. It’d been the “yes, sir” of a white woman who was proud to afford a simple human dignity to a person of color. Now, thanks to you, I see that things like dignity and equality do not belong to white people. They are not ours to give like presents to Black people or anyone else. It’s evident through your actions what you believe, Leland: they’re gifts from God to all humanity.

I don’t know if I believe in God, but I will always believe in you. You’re a man of faith and family who sees himself as a worthy equal in all situations.

Because you’re an equal member of the Ski Patrol team, you’re there on time every single shift, no matter how hard you’ve worked for your pharmaceutical company that week, how much love and attention you need to give your four kids and wife, how far you just traveled for work, or how many REM cycles you managed squeeze in the night before. You show up tired but ready, ragged but enthusiastic, spent but strong. Never a complaint from you, not one.

When we’re treating an injured skier, you kneel next to them and look in their eyes. You get on their level. You show them respect despite their panicked, outrageous demands. You calm them as they scream at you. They’re your equal, and they deserve help. So you patch them up and haul them off the mountain, skiing expertly through ice patches and uneven terrain to get them to safety at your own risk.

You’re a consummate athlete who finds time and energy to coach a Lacrosse team and stick to a tough workout routine when others would be too lazy for either. You push your body to the limit on that mountain, taking call after call, going mile after mile until the job is done. Physically and mentally, you’re the hardest worker I’ve met in my life. With you around, I have no excuse in the world to quit.

Sometimes your hard work doesn’t pay off the way it should. Maybe you’re used to that as a Black man. Remember the Alpine Competency Test, the huge mountain obstacle course you had to complete on skis with a bunch of white-as-snow reviewers staring at you? Many people failed. Most threw fits about the unfairness of the course. You casually shrugged that you’d try again next year. You failed with dignity and, to me, that’s a great triumph. I failed, too. I couldn’t have handled the heartbreak without your example.

Sometimes you get blamed for things that aren’t your fault. Maybe you’re used to that, too. When you were leading our team, some subordinates left a closed slope dangerously unmarked. I remember management’s furious voice screaming across the radio. Instead of screaming back, you went up the mountain yourself and closed the slope. It was no easy feat drilling through ice and setting up frozen ropes, but you got the job done the way you always do. I’d later said I thought the whole thing was unfair to you. Head held high, you told me we all make mistakes.

I made a terrible mistake, Leland. I didn’t stand up for you. You, my leader, mentor, comrade, and dear friend. I surely let you down, and I have no idea why you seem to have forgiven me. It was a cold night and a bunch of us were huddled inside the Ski Patrol headquarters. You were in the bathroom, the one with a three-inch gap under the door. In the common area, I listened as some patrollers started talking about the looting during Hurricane Katrina. “That demographic,” they said, “Is simply more prone to such behavior.” The conversation worsened from there until the patrollers all but said, “Black people steal.” And what did I say? Nothing. I stood by and said nothing. When you came out of the bathroom, everyone’s eyes shot to the ground. You cordially said goodnight and left. I wanted to follow you out into the blowing snow and ask you why on Earth you didn’t say anything. But I was afraid you’d ask, “Why didn’t you?”

I don’t know why you didn’t respond to your colleagues’ racist remarks. I only know that the reason for my silence is vastly different from yours: I’m a coward. I wasn’t brave enough to stand up for you, and I will carry that shame for the rest of my life.

But that shame is not all I carry with me. Thanks to your help, I am in paramedic school, where I will remember that mistakes are not final and should be endured with honor. Watching you, I saw that athleticism can be achieved amidst myriad obligations, and I am a stronger because of you. I learned that leaders don’t have to be perfect if they set a great example.

Most of all, I will remember that we are all equals, whether in each others’ presence or not. I learned from you, Leland, from the way you treat everyone, that dignity is a basic human right that cannot be given, only recognized.