And on the (twenty) … seventh day there was snow, at last, capping a week of gifts and blessings, and bearing promise for the new year.

Grumpy hearts everywhere surely gladdened Saturday morning. A ski town is the one place that gets depressed under warm, sunny skies, where denizens curse precipitation that fails to fall in cold, cold flakes.

I know I felt a familiar tingle seeing the trees outside the house dusted, several inches of white stuff measuring the night’s production on the rail around the deck at dawn.

It was a giddy feeling. That impulse to put my thumb to the snowboard’s edge. To remember runs past, ice pulling on the mustache, that chance to howl, sliding well, and OK, some epic tumbles too. To recheck the plastic tub of coats, gloves, goggles, helmet, boots. Maybe load up the buggy for the season, ever ready. Just let me finish my coffee first.

Yes, it seems like a long wait, the slowest of starts ever. But I’ve waited longer, into January in Colorado and California. The longest was Jan. 10, 2008, before the first of many dumps and what turned out to be a great year in the Tahoe region. I don’t remember it quite this balmy, though, so balmy the snow guns couldn’t work and my cross country trails at Round Valley on Christmas Day ran like August underfoot, all dirt, not so much as an odd clump of snow in low shadows to be seen.

This storm may prove ephemeral, too, the taste of only a drop amid continuing drought. But somehow all seemed right with this world waking up to a fresh white blanket.

I’ll go with that. Take your blessings when you can.

Counting some

All in all, Christmas was good this year for my family. I hope the same with yours. We live where people come to visit, a blessing of its own.

For one, no dropping big bucks on the iffy chance of skiing among the hordes if you are to ski at all. Although last year around this time we did kind of do that, only at Snowbasin, where there was no strike line to cross. Nice to have options.

Maybe I’m giddy at a couple of promising inches because my daughter is talking about a return tomorrow as I write this on Saturday. I don’t even care about crowds or whether the new snow all melts away. Now, this is a gift. I mean the drive alone, just me and her. Boarding’s a bonus.

Beats a book, anyway, and that’s saying something with me. Every other media pales, and most else, too, if I’m being honest. One of my gifts last Christmas was a book to log what you’ve read. My count passed 100 before the year ended. My hard case of tsundoku feels less like compulsion than something to look forward to. Throw in psychosis, I suppose, in that I’m convinced that the very secret of life lies in a novel.

The most surprisingly great gift came at dinner out, though. I met the family at Firewood after work, on my way noting a bustling if too warm evening on Main Street.

My tastes lean more toward burger and a ballgame, and I don’t find the fancier places all that, honestly. This, of course, is more a reflection on me than commentary on the state of fine dining around here.

I’m just saying it’s largely lost on me, between tiny portions arranged just so and ritualized pretension in the serving of what only discriminating palates can fully appreciate. The culinary version of pointillism, basically. Or a banana taped to a wall in an elevated museum.

So I don’t know if I’m speaking well or ill of Firewood, but I was stunned. This easily was my favorite meal in Park City, and for sure among the top 10 all time. Even with the portions just so and Alex, our server, totally pretentious but with a roguish twist of cockiness that made me like him right away.

This was his gift, along with being able to back up his brash talk. The steak? The yellow tail carpaccio appetizer? Best anywhere, he insisted. By far.

Anywhere? We’ll see about that. I ordered ’em. He was right.

Upon reflection

One beauty of gifts is they feel like blessings, and blessings bring hope. This is the stuff of dopamine rather than cortisol, happy anticipation of what’s to come.

This week is more likely than not to have more of us than not optimistic about 2026. This isn’t about rationality in the sense of events, the turn of politics, our personal lives, prospects for snow.

It’s only that giving and receiving gifts and blessings makes us at least slightly more generous in outlook as well as to each other.

The spirit of the season, that thin thread, that silver lining. That’s what I appreciate most about this time of year.

That and going snowboarding with my daughter if she’s in town.  

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.