Warren's World: Please, Wait For Me

“I dug out a handful of trail mix from one of the pockets of a badly worn out White Stag vest. … I carefully picked out a few small, lonely feathers from the trail mix. I sure enjoyed my first lunch with Laurie.”

By Warren Miller

In 1984, I had made the 845-mile drive from Hermosa Beach, Calif., to do my annual film show and start filming my next movie at Sun Valley, Idaho, during the Christmas holidays.

The snow was hard-packed granular because a lot of skiers and snowboarders and not a lot of snow. After lunch in the warming hut at the top of Baldy, I started drawing cartoons for some of the kids whose parents also were not enthusiastic about a few more runs before the lifts closed.

Before long there were four or five kids standing in line for their ski cartoons when a pretty dark haired lady came over and said, “I’m sorry if my son is bothering you.”

I replied, “He’s fine and by the way I’ve met you before. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I had breakfast with you and I hope your ex-husband seven or eight years ago in the Edgewater Inn in Seattle. After breakfast you gave me a business card that had blue ink on it. I can’t remember what your card said, but it had blue ink on it. Is that true?”

And, she said, “Yes.”

We chatted briefly and I asked her, “Could I have your phone number?”

While she was writing it down I asked her, “Can I ski down with you?” She graciously waited for me at the bottom of Warm Springs where I arrived about 2 minutes after she got there.

We chatted a little bit and she walked away. When I looked at the card she had written her phone number on, it was a Seattle phone number. Where do you look for a beautiful, single lady in the gigantic Christmas crowd at Sun Valley?

The next morning I had to work on a script and didn’t get over to Warm Springs until about 11:15 a.m. and somehow found her in the singles lift line. She had already made half a dozen runs on Warm Springs and as we rode up together for the first time, I invited her to join me for a casual lunch after a few runs. Later on the chairlift, I dug out a handful of trail mix from one of the pockets of a badly worn out White Stag vest. It still had enough feathers left in it to sort of keep me warm. I carefully picked out a few small, lonely feathers from the trail mix. I sure enjoyed my first lunch with Laurie.

It didn’t take me more than half a dozen lift rides to figure out that we were definitely, ‘G.U.’ (geographically undesirable) as any future was concerned. She lived in Seattle, had a ski school with a hundred instructors and owned a ski shop with about 30 employees. I still owned my film production company in Hermosa Beach, which is a two-hour flight, or a two-day drive, apart.

That night I was showing my ski movie in the Opera House and I invited Laurie, her son Colin and their friends to the film. I didn’t know that she was chaperoning 10 kids from her ski school near Seattle, whose parents would be arriving in a couple of days.

I had to leave three days later for Los Angles, but not after trying as hard as I could to keep up with her on a pair of skis. Twenty-six years later, I still can’t keep up with her on skis. But that’s OK, because not many other people can either.

Three years later, I managed to talk her into marrying me after a week or so of wearing out my body while windsurfing together in Maui. Twenty-two years ago, we were married in our living room at new our home in Vail and I still couldn’t keep up with her on my skis. But that is OK, because she still waits for me at the bottom of the chairlift.

Many years later we enjoy our winters in our home at the Yellowstone Club in Montana. Last winter, it was in shambles from a $200,000 frozen pipe flood. Every morning, we climbed over the debris of reconstruction as we suited up and walked out in the snow in front of our house, and climbed into our skis just as we have for all of these years. The freedom that our skis give us, made watching them tear out and rebuild the flood damage better than staying on our island home north of Seattle and getting the construction updates over the phone. As Laurie and I always say, “This too shall pass.”

Warren Miller is history’s most prolific and enduring ski film maker. For great gifts for skiing friends and family plus further info about Warren’s wanderings go to warrenmiller.net or visit him on his Facebook page at facebook.com/warrenmiller. To learn about the works of his Foundation, visit the Warren Miller Freedom Foundation at www.warrenmiller.org.