Page 2

one

HUNTER

I’m reading this book about living slowly that might do some good if I had a copy for everyone this morning. The tourists are always in such a hurry. They vacation in a small, mountain town to get away from their busy, stressful lives but bring all that pressure and impatience with them.

One family is disinfecting every exposed part of their bodies in the corner. Nearby, there’s a group of women pouring over the tour schedule with highlighters. And then, as inevitable as time, a dad is coaching his kids—poorly—in front of a guide who knows more about the subject than he does.

We see the same types over and over in the tour business, and some of the guys get pretty cynical about it. That book reminded me to focus on the connections between us.

Whether people are drawn here for peace or adventure, Telluride, a town that changes slowly, tucked between massive mountains that are relatively young, has seen it all. I try to channel that ability to weather anything when tourists get on my nerves—which has already happened on day one.

I chose axe throwing as the first event of the tour. It’s a good opportunity to gauge who we’re working with, a surprisingly telling activity to see how athletic people are, or at least whether they’re body aware and understand kinetic linking.

Warming up my throwing arm, I start drawing the group’s focus by practicing a few times, using my own axe. The ones offered here all have nicks in their edge and the weight in the handle feels off to me now that I’m used to my own. It’s easy to hit the bullseye every time if you can repeat the same steps with every throw, which my own axe allows me.

And because they know me here, they let me throw some trick shots, such as two axes at the same time.

A group of slack-jawed women have gathered to watch me.

“It’s about body memory,” I assure them. “Not skill.”

That’s not 100% true, of course. But it’s true enough to give them some hope they can do it. It will help if they understand the concept that energy travels through connected joints and muscles, like a coordinated sequence or links in a chain, to create optimal movement. However, it’s impossible to tell by looking at people who’s got a background in sports or natural athletic ability. Thus the activity we’re about to engage in.

Now that we have the attention of the group, I give the floor to Scott, one of the other guides from Aspen Adventure Center, who goes over basic safety instructions and then asks for a volunteer to go first.

The group of three women start shoving each other, all of them teasingly trying to persuade another to raise their hand.

“Mollie will do it!” blurts the blonde, and the other two push the third in front of them.

The weakest link, I presume. The woman who always ends up with the short stick, or slightly on the outside of group decision making. She’s wearing leggings that emphasize her curves, and has a brown pixie cut. She looks more nervous than the casual situation calls for. I smile at her, but she looks sweaty and distracted. Scott and I exchange a brief look.

“Let’s not force anyone who’s not ready.” I wave her off.

“No,” she says, surprising me. “I’m ready.” She’s shaking a little, but she steps forward.

Scott invites her to stand in position in front of the stall, behind the line that’s marked 12 feet away from the bullseye. He directs her to put one foot in front of the other and suggests she holds the axe with two hands instead of one.

The woman hefts the axe over her head with both hands, biting her lip. She reels back, throws, and the axe doesn’t even make it all the way to the bullseye. “Good try!” Scott says, reflexively, then starts correcting her posture.

The other two women near me are giggling as they watch. I can tell they’re talking about Scott’s good looks because they turn their backs toward me and whisper. More than once, Scott’s gotten in trouble with our boss for sleeping with clients. It’s too easy for him; he looks like the stereotypical jock and he’s good at teaching. His gentle touch invites women—and a few men—to imagine what he’d be like in a different context.

In contrast, I wear glasses and have to practice every lesson in advance so I don’t stumble over my words trying to explain things. I read more than I talk, so I once mispronounced the word “superfluous” in front of an entire tour group because I’d never used it out loud.

Leaving the women to their whispering, I gesture the family group over to an empty stall to start explaining the mechanics to them. The dad interrupts me several times as I do, but it’s fine. I read a book about the male need to assert dominance and how it’s an evolutionary imperative for some people, something they struggle to overcome. The book made the point that our human ability to conquer that instinct showed the higher evolution of nature. This man still has more in common with the monkeys, so I treat him that way, allowing him to get his show out of the way so things don’t become aggressive. I’m not interested in a fight today, or in impressing the man’s wife. We’re all following our evolutionary imperatives here and mine is to do my job well.

Eventually, I get the family throwing well enough that I can step away and survey how the rest of our tour group is doing.

The group of women are taking turns. The two whisperers are mostly hitting somewhere around the edge of the target. The curvy woman who went first is the worst throw I’ve ever seen. Every axe either doesn’t go far enough, doesn’t stick where it lands, or hits the wall. Scott keeps trying to give her small tips, suggesting she follow through on her throw or step into her front foot, and I see her listen and try to implement them. Still, she keeps flubbing her throws. I’ve never seen someone fail to hit the target so consistently.

I can see on her face that she’s not surprised. This is a woman used to fucking up. She keeps chatting with her friends and smiling, but I see her bite her lip every time she takes a turn.

She continues to take her turns. She’s not giving up.

Still, she’s definitely not enjoying this and I hate that. The whole point of these adventure tours, and the activities we meticulously plan for them, is to get people out of their comfort zone and trying something that surprises them—in good ways. Nobody has fun when an activity makes them feel incompetent, so my job and the job of every guide here is to ensure people achieve basic mastery.

Scott’s trying, but I can tell he’s getting frustrated with Mollie’s inability to improve. He meets my eyes briefly when he turns away from adjusting her stance yet again and gives a tiny shake of his head. Lost cause.

Giving up on a client means a bad review later, so I gesture to him, flicking my thumb back and forth between my group and his to ask if he wants to trade. Scott nods and doesn’t take long to tell the women “my buddy Hunter” is going to help them now. He claps me on the back when we trade places. I know what it means: “Good luck.”

It’s fine. A book I read once about stubborn students—it was meant for public high school teachers—taught me some of the environmental and cultural factors that can make people tough to teach and made me much more patient.

“How are we doing?” I ask the three women, introducing myself to them.

Like the rest of the group, they’re out-of-towners; I suspect from a city. They likely came here for a quaint mountain retreat and signed up for the adventure tour to have something to talk about when they went back home.

The one who’s struggling the most, Mollie, stands behind her two friends. One of them is tall and blonde and skinny; the other is tall and brunette with an undercut on the left side of her head, a design of triple X’s over an ear full of hoops and studs. Mollie is petite and I bet she feels like the odd one out more often than she admits.

“We’re not very good at this,” says one woman.

“It’s our first time, though,” adds the other. “We’re axe-throwing virgins.”

They snicker together. From the smell of their breath and the empty cups on the table nearby, I’d say they’re aware this place serves booze.

“Not any more, you’re not,” I tell them. They giggle more.

“I’m the worst at it,” says Mollie. “I can’t seem to make my body do what the other guide—Scott?—showed me.”

“You’re just making us look better,” one of her friends says to her. “Somebody has to do it.” That makes Mollie’s role in this trio pretty clear.

Mollie shrugs and smiles, not quite meeting my eyes.

“Want to try again?” I ask. “Or are you ready to call it quits?”

She grimaces, and I realize I shouldn’t have given her option two. “Why don’t you watch me a few times?”

I show them my most basic throw, using two hands and going slow. I do that a few times, pointing out my stance, how my weight moves as I throw, and my follow-through.

“You make it look so easy,” Mollie says.

“It’s only easy once you have the muscle memory,” I assure. “Until then, it’s always really hard to do something new.”

One of her friends snorts when I say “really hard” and whispers something to the other friend.

This is the worst part of these tours: being objectified by the single women who come looking for an escape from their so-called real life. They forget that, for me, this is real life. My job is safely leading newbies on the kind of adventures that will get their heart racing and get them talking to their friends. But I go home at night to a room I rent from my boss because everything else around here is too expensive, driven up in price by the very tourists I serve for a living. I have a life fitted in around my adventures that includes laundry and clipping my toenails. I don’t get to escape from reality by working here.

Scott revels in the larger-than-life allure his job gives him. I wear it like a badly chosen suit on a white water river trip. I try to make it fit, yet I’m constantly uncomfortable. Maybe I chose the wrong career, but I feel more like this career chose me. I’m from here. I grew up doing this. There weren’t a lot of other options besides moving away to the city and probably wearing a tie every work day—never a real consideration for me.

Mollie steps forward suddenly and reaches for the axe I’ve been throwing. “Can I try again?” she asks.

I realize she sensed my discomfort and is volunteering herself to cover for her friends. I wonder how often she does this. Mollie is clearly the peacemaker. The empathetic smoother who makes it easier for everyone else to be less sensitive.

“Do you want me to help you adjust your stance?” I ask, holding up both hands so she understands I’m asking if I can touch her.

She bites her lip and nods.

In her eyes, I see determination and doubt. She’s going to try again, but she’s pretty sure she’s going to fail.

I put my hands on her hips and turn her body an inch so she’s facing the target by three quarters. “Does it feel better when you step forward as you throw or when you stand still? Try it a few times without the axe,” I direct.

Stepping back, I watch as she tries to repeat everything I showed her. I fix her stance a few times, trying to imprint the body memory for her. She smells like coconut and her hips are plump, my fingers dipping right into the flesh there. I rarely get this close to clients for this long, but Mollie takes several tries to start repeating the correct movement.

“It’s better when I line up and stay still, so my aim doesn’t change,” she eventually decides.

“OK, let’s try that. How about when you hold the axe with one hand or two? Sometimes when you throw with two hands, it makes it steadier, and sometimes it’s too much force. Try holding the axe without throwing it, just feel it when you hold it over your head.”

I correct her a few more times, telling her to hold the axe over her head and not behind it, and to not let the weight of the axe pull it to either side. She decides to try it one-handed.

“OK, remember you’ve got to keep your wrist stiff so the axe goes where you’re throwing it,” I tell her, ignoring the giggles over “stiff” from the other women, who have refilled their cups. I’m sure they have many lovely qualities that are not at the forefront during this activity. “You want to release at the top of the throw, not at the level you’re trying to hit,” I coach Mollie. “Keep your eyes on the target the whole time, don’t watch the axe.”

“This is a lot to remember,” she murmurs. Her body is tensing up.

“Hey, it’s just a game. Nothing to get too worried about. Axe-throwing is a good way to get some justifiable rage out, if you have any. And I hear rage is justifiable for most women.” I’m trying to win a smile, and I get one.

“I don’t have too much rage,” she denies. “Maybe some.”

“Alright, well, channel that into your throw.” I grin at her. “Not too much rage, though. The perfect amount. OK, Mollie. Give it a few warm-up throws. You got this.”

Stepping away from her, I gesture at her friends that they should be filming this. She’s got it this time. To their credit, they both fumble to get out their cell phones quickly and start recording.

Mollie repeats the throwing sequence twice, mimicking everything I showed her, before she lets an axe fly. It hits the target, barely off the bullseye. She screams in excitement. It’s the first time her axe has stuck to the wall.

Her friends shriek too, jumping up and down.

I hold up both hands to give Mollie double high-fives and she jumps into my arms instead, surprising me. I give her a celebratory hug, unable to prevent her soft breasts from pressing against my chest. It’s nice. She fits there perfectly.

Shit, it’s been too long since I touched a woman. Half a year, at least, since Jenna and I broke up when she quit the adventure center and left town. No—that was last season, so nearly a year ago.

Before I can get too inappropriate, Mollie jumps back like she realized she’s hugging a stranger. She gives me a shy smile and then rejoins her friends to re-watch the moment on their phone screens.

In the next stall, Scott meets my eyes. He gives me a thumbs up and I grin. This is why I became an adventure guide, after all. The satisfaction of teaching someone how to do something they thought they couldn’t gets me through the less fun parts of my job.

And sweet hugs from pretty women don’t hurt, either, despite my misgivings about being the object of a stranger’s affection.