IN TOW
A proud valley resident gives her son the high-country childhood of her dreams.
GIVING MY SON THE HIGH-COUNTRY CHILDHOOD OF MY DREAMS.
A group of women cheer me on as I ride by, raising their fists in the air. “You’re a superhero!” they scream. “Go, mama, go!”
I’m on the final pitch, a never-ending switchback running up the mountainside. Snowbanks tower over us several stories high, still far from melted in mid-May, so the road appears as if it’s been cut between two huge slabs of marble. As I look over a precipice, the valley floor comes into view almost 4,000 feet below. I turn the cranks on my pedals and creep along, slowly making my way up the 20-mile climb from downtown Aspen to the top of Independence Pass—a real chore, especially when
I’m towing a bike trailer with my four-month-old son and pug on board. That’s some 30 pounds of dog and baby cargo.
Friends from other parts of the country think my husband and I are crazy for dragging our baby along on our countless mountain adventures. They marvel at our arsenal of equipment: the trailer with its bike, ski, and running wheel attachments; the plastic baby skis; the elaborate backpack we carry him in, complete with drool pad and collapsible sun shade; his Patagonia down onesie and red sunglasses with the blue polarized lenses. Since that trip up the mountain, he’s ridden the Aspen Mountain gondola, celebrated his first birthday at the Pine Creek Cookhouse, napped in his stroller during après-ski at The Sky, and crawled around our picnic blanket at the summer concert series at Snowmass.
I’d dreamed of living in Aspen ever since my parents took me on a ski vacation to Snowmass when I was 8. It was one thing when I made that dream come true for myself. But to have a child and to raise him here, to share with him the stuff my own dreams were made of—to carry him on my back under the denimblue sky surrounded by a kaleidoscope of snowcapped peaks, listening to the song of his gurgles and coos—is heart-busting. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my son on top of the world—even if I have to pedal his little butt up there. .