The stranger riding Crescent Lift with me the other day remarked to me or no one in particular, “Practice maximum enthusiasm.” I was a bit tuned out with one AirPod in my ear blasting one of my favorite ski tunes, The Gorillaz’ “We Got the Power.“ “Whaaa—?” The guy pointed down and I realized he was referring to a sticker I’d put on my ski. “Oh, that. Yes, I’m an optimist,” I responded. Which is mostly true. But sitting there, surveying the snow’s slo-mo reveal of sagebrush and stumps, my claim to sunshine, unicorns and rainbows felt harder than ever to sell. The moment felt as weighted and weightless as the chairlift itself, suspended above the Earth. Times feel heavy — not just here in Park City but in the world beyond us. Even Evan Thayer, one of our area’s most reliable purveyors of maximum enthusiasm, seemed to be struggling to find the silver lining. The Utah forecaster for the OpenSnow app and a weather columnist for this paper, posted a report this week headlined “Grasping at straws.” When even positivity feels forced, you begin to wonder what we’re really clinging to. Is it enthusiasm or just the comfort of only seeing on what’s directly in our sights, instead of everything else going on in the world — the parts we’re afraid to look too closely at? I can’t erase the images of that morning in Minneapolis — the videos, the crack of gunfire, the ongoing anger and grief spilling into the streets. It’s a reminder that outside of our small-town forecasts and daily disgruntlement, much larger uncontrollable events continue to unfold. And maybe that’s why, when the world is spinning faster and darker than we can take in, we narrow our perspective. We look down instead of out. We focus on the things that feel no farther away than what we can see from the chairlift. We talk about snow. Living here in lean snow years like this one seems to gather us in more intentionally than a rope-drop-free-for-all on Jupiter Bowl. Strangers talk to each other on the chairlifts. Skiers on the bus swap theories, insights, half-truths. Someone swears it’ll turn once Sundance ends. We’ve all been the person who left town only to learn the next day that Park City got a foot overnight. No friends on a powder day. It’s the dry spells that gather us in. And when the biggest problem seems to be a lack of snow, we do the pow dance. We place a spoon under our pillow. We flush ice cubes down the toilet — one cube for hope, three for luck, seven for total denial. We wash our cars. We practice maximum enthusiasm, if only to give ourselves the slimmest shred of evidence that it still exists. We don’t perform these rituals because they actually fix anything. We do them because they bring definition to days that otherwise blur together. Focusing on what’s right in front of us; that’s how we survive. And maybe that’s what these rituals are about. Not belief in outcomes, but belief in ourselves and each other. Something shared. Something we can touch. Back on Crescent Lift, with one AirPod in, the Gorillaz were still looping in my ear: “We got the power to be loving each other no matter what happens.” It’s not a revolutionary idea. Yeah, I know it’s almost embarrassingly obvious. Maybe even totally naïve, but I’m going with it. You can love each other, OK? It’s a no-brainer. That’s the refrain I keep coming back to. It’s my way of practicing maximum enthusiasm — riding up chairlifts, talking to strangers and waiting for the snow to fall. The post Betty Diaries: Practice maximum enthusiasm appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less