Night Time is the Right Time
by Billy Miller

It's a quick run to the hills, those in question rising and rising out of wet, fecund forest and green thicker than a slab of seven-layer burrito, up and out of muddy Dairy Queen parking lots and back into forests that made ol' Oregon great, entwined thickets running first offense--seas of them holding back the encroaching hordes of humanity from their king, their Mt. Hood, towering grandly over all her subjects, shiny and white enough to inspire confidence that this will all be worth it.

But Mt. Hood Meadows closes at four, damn! Our plan looking thwarted, the victim of a wild winter bringing no snow, then some snow, then floods and pestilence! And now peaceful dtente with new inches every few days, though in a normal spring we would've been surrounded along the road by plowed-up snow walls twice the size of the puny igloos there now.

Oh well. What matter the particulars while twilight wanes, bringing NIGHT and with it, new life. A quick repast of pizza at the infamous Ratskeller, second home to many a beer guzzlin', two-edged, pinball slappin' degenerate like my friend Jew, who racks eighty-million points amid a flurry of multiple balls, but still letting loose a howl, jumping on top of the machine's metal corners when the last one finally drops, before we can convince him down and out the door. "You don't understand," He wails, "I would've been Penthouse King!"

Such is the night--deepening--cold and windy pulling out of Government Camp, the tiny string of lights put on the map by Roosevelt-era Work Progress Administration and kept there by visitors to Mt. Hood like the hordes of summer campers--first skiers but now sideways people--who keep the Rat in cold beer sock drawer change and the Huckleberry Inn churning out milkshakes.

Like the one we drive through, slushy ice, just firming up, like our resolve as we slide up the hill, putting on boots again, anticipation, battening down the hatches for what looks to be not a cold winter's day but NIGHT. Finally there, and parked, and out the door, running to the ticket booth at the Wy'east Lodge for a ten-dollar ticket--hell, who hasn't spent more on a shitty night's entertainment--a bad band, or too many foozeball games at the Rat, but this--this a night like no other beckoning us out in it--for a ten spot, how bad could it be!?

Plenty good, it turns out. Terrain mellow and ululating as a golf course hill. Timberline not the extremest of slopes, though plenty of doughy rollers and soft, wind-packed fluff to amuse and stoke; following four deep over tiny bumps and hips and anything looking like it might provide a few precious moments of air between base and its earthly white tether.

And the night, lit overhead by yellowish bug retardents, hardly making a dent in the rich blackness framed by old growth, the snow an incandescent purple, like groping through an unfamiliar black light painting on the wall of an acquaintance.

And squeaking through the night on suspended wire, Jew bending my ear loudly how, "My best two days this year have been night's at (Mt. Hood) Ski Bowl, 'cause it's night and there's nobody around but it's dumping," intoning so I grasp the entirety of it all, "You're floating through epic fluff and it's not really dark, just gray but the slopes are empty--ripping tracks filled in the next time you come down. Awesome!"

There's more here yet--The Overlook! Or at least the exterior shots of the snow-swept mansion in the middle of nowhere, born of Stephen King's imagination in The Shining, and later, in Stanley Kubrick's classically creepy movie starring Shelly Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and in the part his eerie charm boiled over--Jack Nicholson. The plot told of a hotel too remote and snowed in to get to save by snowcat. And for that look Kubrick chose the Timberline Lodge where drifts commonly bury this first outpost on Mt. Hood up to the second-story and they put up a seasonal tunnel to the front door. Riding in the tree-dotted fields just below this massive, beautiful structure built of stone and hand-carved wood during the WPA is like riding through The Shining's hedge maze--dark, spooky, and mysterious, heart thumping with exhilaration, fears cheated by every turn. The night--this night belongs to you and not some beer commercial. Moon and stars overhead and you're still riding, the hills still ringing with hoots and laughter, still tricks and lines there for the taking, no matter what the visibility. The night a new quality of the experience, renewing the belief that as long as you're not dead, you must be really living.

But if you're a snowboarder and like riding better then, say, country-line dancing (which a woman in Oregon died from!) you shouldn't need any provocation (and certainly none from me) to go try this for a night's amusement instead of going to bed dreaming you had. So there's one thing to know, and this, no bullshit here: the night is scary as the unknown. But we long and live to reassess our assumptions about what is true, and whether Jack really is waiting in those trees to plant an ax head in your sternum.

When he isn't, the thrill runs boot laces to beanie how you've stared down fears primordial as the ooze and bested them. And once you're back in the cut-up clear, snot involuntarily running down your face, riding to the lift where your buddies call out, "One more! Another!" You smile, knowing the night time is the right time, and strapped to your feet is the proper implement for cutting loose.

Night Riding on Mt. Hood, Oregon

Mt. Hood Meadows

Tickets: $15 or a $5 upgrade on your day's ticket

Hours: 4-10 p.m. during the season, but over now.

Area phone: (503) 337-2222 Snow conditions: (503) 227-SNOW

Mt. Hood Ski Bowl

Tickets: $11 (but according to local opinion, no one ever really seems to know)

Hours: unfortunately, through for the season

Are phone: (503) 272-3206 Snow conditions: (503) 222-2695

Timberline

Tickets: $10

Hours: 4 -10 p.m.

Area phone: (503) 272-3311