The People's Mountain

I went to a fight and a family reunion broke out, or so it felt during closing weekend at Vermont’s Mad River Glen ski area. It was Saturday night, day two of a gloriously sunny and warm three-day tear in April, and a ragtag crew was closing down the dirt parking lot well after dark. As if to put an exclamation point on a day of adrenaline, alcohol, and skiing, a fifty-something guy from Massachusetts who owned a nearby chalet hurled his empty beer bottle through the sky into a distant snowbank. A multigenerational local Gen-Z’er took umbrage, and after much shouting and pushing, they were pulled apart before anyone could throw a punch.

It was like the distant, crazy uncle sparring with the first-family nephew. They’d known each other for years, and maybe there was a subtext of territorial pissing match and class warfare at play. But it was also quaintly Vermont in nature: fighting over littering. And it was violence-free, in