Publisher’s Note
By Rodney J. Auth
Illustration: PRB+ (original artwork)
I was ten minutes early when I pushed the door open of the ski patrol headquarters for the first time. With a small breath to calm my nerves, I kicked my ski boots against the door frame to clear them of snow and stepped more tentatively than I wanted inside. Instantly, 12 sets of eyes were on me. One of them was connected to a smiling face and said, âHi.â âGood morning,â I returned, feeling myself starting to relax. With the ice broken, I went about the business of trying to look like I knew what I was doing while secretly watching the regular patrollers for clues as to how I was supposed to prep myself for the day. A few minutes later, the dayâs hill captain joined us. He took pains to introduce me as a rookie and walked me through what I needed to doâi.e., sign up for a run to open and close, sign up for 30-minute shift monitoring/enforcing face mask compliance at the main lift and sign up for my shift in the top shack. All of that finished, he handed me a radio, welcomed me to the team and went on with the morning briefing. What was so scary a few moments prior was suddenly fine. At the close of the meeting, patrollers introduced themselves, welcomed me to the team, and answered questions. As a group, we walked out the door into the semi- darkness of the winter morning, clicked into our skis and jumped on the lift to open our runs for the day. As I rode solo up the lift, watching the sky beyond the ridge start to glow with the early morning sun, I enjoyed the small feeling of accomplishment you get when you do something for the very first time. Iâve heard this experience called âthreshold spaceââa place where things arenât easy. Threshold space is part of life. Sometimes, weâre going to search out this space by intentionally trying new thingsâlike joining ski patrol. Other times, weâre going to be jammed into this space by circumstances outside of our controlâlike having a kid diagnosed with cancer or finding yourself in the middle of a global pandemic. Regardless, itâs good to know threshold space is just thatâa small space, a moment in time. It doesnât last foreverâno matter how it feels at the time.