Tribute
Forget about the ski trails for a minute.
I’m not going to talk about snow, brush, gators, belts, idlers or stem lanes.
I’m going to talk about community and the people who surround Montreal and Uller Trails.
Yesterday we got a call from the mother of one of the young women I had the privilege to coach a few years ago. After getting an update on where she was and what she was studying, her mother told CC and I to be at the Memorial Building the next day for our first Covid inoculation. And don’t be too early.
Now, bear with me for a little personal information. I’m a fainter. It all started at Great Lakes Naval Station in 1970 and it involved a bunch of Navy Orderlies running around us standing in line in our skivvies. Well, that’s enough information. Anyway, I always make a point to tell the nurses and phlebotomists that I have this psychotic affliction and I don’t ever want to make their day worse.
After a morning of worrying about how I will react to institutional health care, we walked in. Although everyone was wearing masks and it was hard to tell who was who, the guy who welcomed us is a long time ski trail user. The next person we ran into is a neighbor who asked if she could walk her dog on the new Uller connector (yes). One of the women who filled out our insurance and registered us for today’s shot was a pitcher I worked with for more than four years. We fist butted, not because of Covid, we’ve been fist butting since she was a freshman. Three, that’s right, three women took me behind a screen and put me on a cot. The woman who stuck me has been skiing our trails since the ‘70’s (I told her a standard deer fly bite is worse than her poke). The woman monitoring my pulse and BP is the mother of a girl who was in the same class as our son. If that’s not enough special care for an old trail rat, the mother of another young woman I coached (nick-named the ‘fouling Finn’ - everybody on our teams had a nick-name) came over and we traded pictures of our grand kids. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise they kept mind off of what was really going on. While I decompressed, a woman who was in CC’s Brownie Troop walked up and introduced herself. She was the head of Iron County Health Department; running the whole clinic.
Almost all these people I mentioned had volunteered to be there for this clinic. A couple had been called out of retirement to be there. They could have said no. They could have stayed home and out of harms way; but they were there and had been there for many more clinics than todays. I expect to see them again in a month when we go back for round #2. The others, ICHD staff could probably make a lot more money in the other parts of health care; but they chose public health and they were besides themselves working where one of them said ‘where the rubber meets the road’ during a 100 year pandemic. Wow. And I worry if it’s a little below zero when it’s time to groom.
Whether you live up here, or come to visit once in a while, or if you are reading this from where you will probably never be able to ski our trails, these are the type of folks who make our community. Like us, they realize that there’s a bigger need out there than just their concerns, and they show up to take care of business.
This is my tribute to them. I will never tire of doing my volunteering for this type of people. Ski Freely forever. Z
