Mountain Home: Finding solace high above Breckenridge. Photo: Devon O’Neil

It would be easy to say I didn’t know why I was going, but I knew, even if I still struggle to explain the reason. It wasn’t because everyone had told me how much fun their 10-year college reunion was, and how much fun mine would be. Or because all my old friends would be there—the truth was, thanks to work and kids and whatever else keeps people from their past, only a few had committed. No, I went for a strange but undeniable reason: I wanted to revisit an era in my life that I know is dead, and was sure I no longer needed.

I packed a small duffel bag, watched the sun set behind the jagged Gore Range, then drove 105 miles to the airport, alone. It was the first Thursday in June. I had just returned from my third trip in two weeks and was already questioning this ticket purchase; I wanted to stay home, ski some corn, maybe ride my bike with my brother. Instead, I boarded a red-eye flight from Denver to Boston, then caught a four-hour ride to Vermont with an old pal named Dennis.

During the drive to Vermont, Dennis and I spent most of our time catching up on each other’s lives. He told me about his infant son and his job as a high school teacher and football coach. It felt weird to hear myself say the words “writer” and “mountains” and “wife,” given where we were headed, but I was proud, too. I had escaped a bubble I once doubted I’d escape.

Dennis and I met as freshmen on the football team. He, a public-school running back from Massachusetts, was given No. 83, and I, a private-school receiver from the Virgin Islands, got 32. We promptly traded jerseys and so began our friendship. Senior year, we lived with four others in a farmhouse that faced the Green Mountains. Our most beloved roommate was a red-haired linebacker from Idaho named Andy Steele, whose surname made more sense once he leveled you in practice.

Both Dennis and I admired Andy for the way he led his life as well as the way he hit and played, though I never would have admitted all that back then. He was our team captain and the school’s first All-American in more than two decades. He remains one of the only people I’ve seen inspire mass numbers to follow him without ever trying. Part of the reason I was so driven to attend my reunion is because Andy had died less than a year before it, and I missed him.

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