I thought the house down the road was on fire, and went down to take a look. Turns out it was on fire, and since this was in June when the whole state was drier than dinosaur bones, I was a little concerned. Huge forest fires were burning in Colorado, Arizona and in every direction right there in New Mexico. I jogged down the road as a fire truck and a few other vehicles pulled in, one of which was a cop car. The policeman got out and instead of even looking at the house on fire, he looked at me. I looked back at him. He pointed at me, some thirty feet away from him, and he flexed his finger in the classic come-hither motion but in a way that caught my attention. He could easily have walked over to me, since he was probably twenty years younger and presumably a lot more spry. I looked around me to see if he was after some other law breaker, but there wasn’t anyone. So I eased on over to the officer. He said “Where do you live?” I said, “Back up the road.” He said, “Go home!” and kind of as an afterthought, “You’re blocking traffic.”

Forgetting for a moment that there isn’t much traffic out where I live and forgetting that it isn’t really illegal to be outside one’s home and forgetting that I’m an EMT and might be useful to have around should somebody get hurt the way they sometimes do in a fire, I apologized and started up the road. I pondered the fact that the young officer of the law had a pretty good power trip going and for no reason that I could easily pick out. But as I skulked away, I tried not to take it too personally. In fact, I marveled at his technique, thinking perhaps I could learn from it. Certainly, I’m no hard ass, and never have been. In fact, my record of enforcing rules and disciplining bad folk is blemished if not downright poor. I never had any trouble yelling at people who were yelling at me, but being authoritarian and rude to nice people has always challenged me. I remember I went inside my place after the cop had shooed me away, and practiced the beckoning finger in the mirror, the steady gaze, the “Go home!”

I thought about my lesson in power again this last week as I put on my ski patrol uniform and hit the slopes looking for bloodless knee injuries. I love helping people in the mountains. That is why I ski patrol. Not for power and not for powder. Not for the high pay. Not for the cool uniform with the radio on the chest. And I don’t much like blood and guts and gore. I mean, if you cut yourself wide open and start spraying blood all over Taos Ski Valley, don’t come running to me. I do carry gloves and dressings and stuff like that, of course, and I’ll bind you up if I have to, but I prefer knee injuries. People with knee injuries are usually quite nice and calm and into a little pleasant conversation as you bundle them up in the toboggan. They are often grateful and sorry to put you out… but of course, not everybody at the ski area can be knee injured… there are other problems to attend to. To me, law enforcement is right up there with blood and guts and gore. It makes me squeamish. I have only to think back to that bright and sunny powder morning two years ago to relive my shame and weakness. That day at 11,819ft in the Sangre De Cristo mountains when I walked into our patrol headquarters and saw Royal Moulton with the binoculars up to his eyes.

— Dave Hahn, MountainZone.com Columnist