My Story

I grew up in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, where skiing shaped nearly every part of my childhood. In 1974, my parents made what my father later called “the best investment of his life” — purchasing a family lifetime ski pass at Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort. For the next decade, I spent nearly every winter weekend on the mountain racing, freestyle skiing, crashing, competing, and learning the strange social ecosystem that exists anywhere people gather together in cold weather and shared adversity.

Skiing became my first real language. It introduced me to coaches, mentors, teammates, outsiders, risk-takers, and larger-than-life characters who helped shape the emotional foundation beneath The Furry Mountain Monkeys of Aspen, Colorado. At Berkshire School, legendary coach Bob Brigham recruited me onto one of New England’s dominant prep-school ski programs, where skiing often provided the sense of belonging that classrooms did not. Later, at the University of Colorado Boulder, I worked under future Hall of Fame ski coach Richard Rokos, a refugee from communist Czechoslovakia whose positive, athlete-first coaching style left a lasting impression on me.

Although I studied psychology in college, I do not view the book as something born from academic theory. The story grew from lived experience — from mountains, competition, humor, fear, friendship, resilience, and the universal desire to feel accepted inside unfamiliar tribes.

The historical fiction aspect of the book began almost accidentally. Shortly after moving to Aspen in 1994, I came across a small classified ad in the Aspen Daily News that simply read:

“Write children’s story. Incorporate Aspen history. Submit to P.O. Box…”

So I did.

What followed became a hidden underground world of snow monkeys, abandoned silver mines, hot springs, survival, adaptation, and belonging — themes that had quietly followed me for most of my life already.