A Small and Temporary Community of Friends

My first memory of a ski lift is from Tomtabacken in Växjö, Sweden, where I grew up. It was the end of the 1970s. In Sweden, skiing had become extremely popular, and I was not alone in imitating alpine hero Ingemar Stenmark in front of the TV—with my wooden skis on the parquet floor. Tomtabacken’s ski hill had a measly hundred-foot vertical drop and a painfully slow rope tow. You had to hold on tight as it dragged you mercilessly forward, but I quickly decided that not hiking back up the hill made it worthwhile. My friends and I would spend entire weekends on this tiny slope, and my passion for skiing grew stronger—at about the same rate that the frayed rope ate my ski mitts one pair after another.

On a cold February day a few years later, my family took me to Kala Höjden, my hometown’s steepest hill. The lift had a gizmo mounted on the metal cable, which