Dirtbag Recipes: Introduction to Dirtbag Cooking

Just admit it. You pride yourself on your frugal, dirtbag lifestyle, but you’re still a picky eater. Yes, you eat out of dumpsters, worship road kill (the food left over from the courses you work or the clients you guide), and you will do nearly anything for a free cup of coffee. But when you can—when your bank account is feeling flush after a few weeks of work, when you’re crashing at your parents house (living for a few days off the mother tit, as my friends and I call it), or simply feeling nutrient-starved after a three-week course in the mountains—you gravitate toward higher-quality food products. A jar of almond butter here, a bag of the finest fair-trade coffee there, and all the avocados and organic greens you can muster.

Follow Your Horoscope: You’ll Find the Perfect Line

Ed, one of my ski partners, sits on a stool next to the potbelly stove, crinkling up pages from the Idaho Mountain Express to start a fire. With each page he pauses: skimming the headlines before slowly forming the paper into a ball and placing it in the stove. When he reaches the horoscope section he clears his throat to get our attention.

“Chase,” he says, “you won’t learn anything if you do it right the first time.” I’m sitting across the yurt from Ed, a mug of tea nestled in my hands. I take a sip, lower my eyelids, and peer at him through the steam rising out of the mug—exaggerating, to his amusement, that I’m thinking deeply about the advice.

“Brian,” Ed continues, beginning to giggle. “Don’t argue with your adversary even if he, or she,” he accentuates the she and shoots a sideways glance at me, “is wrong.”

“Very interesting,” I say, refocusing my glare on Brian, who is lounging on the bench next to me, with his feet resting on a chair and his fingers intertwined on his belly: a confident half-smile on his face. We learned at the beginning of the ski season that our styles occasionally don’t jive: we are both stubborn, competitive, and hate being wrong. He is a more aggressive skier; I am a far superior arguer.

The Eurovan: A Love Story (Part I)

THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIAGE

A gust of wind catches the hem of my pink sundress, blowing it high enough to reveal my underwear to the empty street. With a payphone cradled in the crook of my neck I glance up, eyes swollen from holding back tears, at storm clouds growing in the sky. When I woke up this morning it was spring in California: sunshine, blue sky, and the smell of sagebrush. Now a massive, Eastern Sierra snowstorm is moments away from unleashing. For warmth, I have a pair of brown yoga pants and a powder blue sweatshirt in my backpack.

“Hey Dad,” I whimper into the phone. “For some reason they couldn’t finish the windows in the van today. It’s still at the shop. They took the cardboard out, so now I really can’t drive it.”

Guiding in Bright Pink Long Underwear

“This next stretch should be fast,” I say to the group of women standing uphill from me. “Try to carry your speed to the road.” I point my skis down the fall line, but the snow is slower then I expected: I’m barely moving. The women behind me are laughing: none of them follow.