To Hell with Communism

Following is one of my journal entries from February of the year 2000.  The event and conversation took place at Discovery Ski Area:

After skiing down from sun-filled ridgelines and navigating cuts through tall pines I reached the lift line for a double chair behind my two partners.  They paired-up for the chair, leaving me as a single.  Noticing an older man there in line without a partner, I asked if he cared to share a lift chair with me.

 

He affirmed and we merged into a pair.

No more than a dozen people stood in the lift line ahead of us.  We quickly herringboned ahead and flopped into a chair.   Save for the come-and-go squealing of occasional tower sheaves, the chair smoothly ascended the vast snow and timber mountains, often whisking us high above snowy forest or snowpack  runs filled with skiers and snowboarders draining back down to the lodge in their quirky patterns.   The elder gentleman and I began chatting as soon as our skis lifted from the base of the mountain.  I detected a distinct accent as we spoke.  Though some might consider such a thing rude, I asked him where he had come from.

“I am from Poland,” he said.

“What brought you to this country?”

“I came to escape communism.”

“Oh, I understand.  My wife fled from Vietnam for the same reasons.  Her family actually began a flight from communism near the Chinese border.  For many years, they kept leaping just a little ahead of the wave, until they reached the southern tip of Vietnam.”

The gentleman nodded appreciatively.  “I am glad she is here.”

“Me, too.”

Following the sinusoidal mountainshape, the chair slowly dipped into a small valley, then began to ascend rather sharply up the long, timbered face of a mountain.  “The thing is,” the man continued, “communism is a stupid system.  I don’t understand why it took all these years to fall.”

“Do you have family left behind?”

“Not much.  A brother-in-law and sister.  I am old.”

I nodded, not exactly wishing to agree, but unable to deny the gentleman’s advanced age.  I clacked my skis together and gazed out over the ever-expanding panorama, the rugged Anaconda-Pintlar Wilderness, Georgetown Lake.  “I love the vista from this chair,” I said conversationally.  “These are beautiful days, skiing.”

We talked about other things as the chair scaled up toward the roving clouds and mountaintops.  Someplace above the expanse of snow and forest, the subject turned to Butte and the strong union sentiment there.  I told him I favored unions over all other options.  He admitted that he saw them as less than ideal.  The gentleman thought unionism, when overplayed by workers, when over-controlling, was a second-cousin to communism.  We spoke about the Midwest, which he did not like, having lived there for a few years.  “This is where I want to live,” he told me.

We said ‘good-bye’ as the chair drew close to the top.

I think about that ride up the chair because in many ways I know as much about that man as I know about some people I have known for ten years.  We agreed.  We disagreed amicably.  And I don’t even know his name.

--Mitchell Hegman