Last Sunday afternoon, on the spur of the moment, Anne and I decided to drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon.
We were both in a funk, me because of the things I wrote about a week ago, Anne for reasons of her own that I wouldn’t presume to make public here. We each craved a break from our usual routine as well as some reassurance that the whole damn planet really hadn’t spiraled off its axis, or plunged into an parallel dimension where everything looks the same but somehow just sucks. We wanted sanity and peace. We needed sunshine and fresh air and solitude. The solution was obvious, high gas prices be damned, and within minutes we had the top down on my Mustang and we were motoring eastward, toward the mountains and away from the hateful ‘burbs.

For those who might not know, Little Cottonwood is one of a dozen or so drivable canyons within easy reach of the Salt Lake area. Each of them has its own attractions, personality and terrain; Little Cottonwood Canyon is my favorite of them. It’s not as steep or as winding as its cousin to the north, Big Cottonwood, but it is more narrow; in many places, the canyon is little more than a deep, V-shaped cleft between two granite walls. A two-lane road runs up the floor of this cleft, right alongside a natural creek that is fed by high mountain snowpacks. The cliff-sides are thickly forested, at least by Utah standards, and the tapestry of trees gradually morphs from scrub oak to quaking aspen to Douglas fir as you climb higher.

I used to spend a lot of time up this canyon. It’s always been a good place to get out of the summer heat, to take a date for a picnic, or to go on days when a darkened cinema doesn’t offer a sufficient amount of escape. I even had a specific place in the canyon where I used to go and brood, back when I was still young enough to think that sitting on a rock and wallowing in angst was romantic instead of vaguely pathetic. “My Spot,” as I always thought of it, is by the creek, beneath the level of the road and sheltered enough that on most days you can perch on a tumbled boulder, with the rushing water at your feet to block the highway sounds and a screen of trees around you to camoflage the passing traffic, and feel blissfully alone in the world.

This wasn’t one of those days, however. The turn-out nearest to “My Spot” was jammed with parked cars, and I imagined the creek was probably full of guys in hip-waders and lure-bedecked hats. I drove on, climbing ever higher, past the Snowbird ski resort, where Utah’s own version of Oktoberfest was in full-swing. (Yes, Virginia, it’s true; you can find alpenhorns, oompah bands, and men in lederhosen here in the mountains of Utah. But unlike the original Oktoberfest in freewheeling Munich, here you have to drink your lager behind velvet ropes that segregate the beer tent from the kiddie face-painting booths. Such is life in Utah.)

While Oktoberfest does have its charms, I had a more sedate destination in mind: the town of Alta, year-round population slightly under 400, elevation slightly over 8500 feet. It’s an ancient mining village and one of the oldest ski resorts in the country. Unlike the sprawling Snowbird complex just below it, however, Alta has so far resisted large-scale development (as well as, controversially, the presence of snowboarders) and so it retains a quaint, small-town feeling. In other words, there’s not much there in the way of buildings, and in the summertime there’s virtually no activity, either, aside from a few hikers bound for the Albion Basin and Catharine Pass at the very top of the canyon.

The air was crisp up there, if a bit thin, and the sun seemed closer to the earth. Once I parked the car and shut off the engine, the only sounds we heard were a whisper of wind, a bird’s call, and the crazy, pinwheel whirring of a mountain-bike as it streaked down-canyon at suicidal speeds. Looking back the way we’d come, we could see a wedge-shaped slice of the Salt Lake Valley, hazy and indistinct at the bottom of the world. This was exactly what Anne and I needed to soothe our souls.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t thought much about our other needs when we left the house. Driving with the top down on a sunny day in Utah’s dry climate tends to suck the moisture right out of you, and we’d neglected to bring any kind of liquid with us. There were a couple of restaurants open along Alta’s main (only) street, but we doubted these places would provide anything to drink without us buying a meal, and we were still digesting a rather large brunch. There was, of course, nothing resembling a Kwik-E-Mart in sight. But there was a gift shop right across the road from where I was parked, an unassuming little place called The Photohaus, tucked under the protective overhang of a looming, multi-story house. A hand-painted sign out front announced the proprietor’s wares: Alta-logo T-shirts, hats, film.

Perfect, I thought, a gift shop; surely a gift shop catering to stupid tourists like myself will have a cooler in the corner, stocked with soda and bottled water. All gift shops have those, don’t they?

Anne didn’t feel like exploring, so I ventured off by myself. The entrance to the shop opened into a kind of atrium (although that’s too grandiose a word for a tiny, dark space built of old, weather-warped plywood), from which broad wooden steps led upwards to a homemade door. I was amused to see that this door was equipped with an old-fashioned metal pull-handle and a dangling hasp for a padlock. I tugged the door open, expecting to see a standard-issue, shopper-friendly emporium on the other side.

Instead, I found myself in a space even smaller than the “atrium,” a mudroom, judging from the heap of shoes in the corner. A spiral staircase led even farther upwards, and I grimly trudged toward the sky, wondering just what kind of a bizarro place I’d stumbled into.

At the top of the stairs was a landing; directly ahead was a set of sliding, patio-style doors that led out onto a balcony with a sweeping view of the ski runs. Turning away from the view, I saw a door in either corner of the landing, and then the gift shop itself, which was little more than a cubbyhole on the other side of the staircase, stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes and shelves of not-so-neatly folded clothes. A cash register was partially hidden beneath a carelessly tossed “Ski Alta” fleece. I thought the whole place had a haphazard, amateurish air about it. Then it dawned on me: The Photohaus isn’t beneath the house; it’s in the house.

I was standing in someone’s home business.

That someone emerged through one of the doors as I stood there, wondering what to do next: a tall, gray-haired fellow dressed in chinos, a plaid shirt, and Merrell Jungle Mocs, a type of shoe I always associate with outdoorsy types. He hadn’t shaved in several days, and he was blinking as if I’d woken him from a nap. He smiled broadly enough, though. I said hello and asked him if he had any bottled water for sale.

“You’re trying to buy water at a t-shirt shop?” he asked.

“Well, there’s not many other businesses up here, and I figured you might have a cooler or something. I drove up from the valley with my girl and we didn’t think to bring anything to drink…” I replied, feeling incredibly ignorant.

He nodded, and said, “Let me see what I can find.” He exited through the door on the other side of the landing. He was gone a long time, long enough that I started wondering if I shouldn’t just leave with some shred of my dignity still intact. Just before I bolted down the stairs, however, he returned with two small bottles of lemon-lime flavor Gatorade. He held them out to me.

I knew immediately that these bottles had come from this guy’s personal stock. He’d gone into his own kitchen to see what he could find for a foolish city slicker who come up the canyon unprepared.

“You don’t have to sell me your own stuff,” I said, worried that I might offend him but more embarassed about the circumstances.

“Don’t be silly,” the guy said. “They’re yours if you want them.”

I licked my lips, which suddenly felt like sheets of printer paper dangling from the front of my face, and asked how much I owed him. He sold them to me for only a dollar a piece, more, I think, to get me to take them than anything. I gratefully pulled a couple of singles from my wallet. After the transaction, I shook the guy’s hand, thanked him and told him I’d be back sometime, and went back downstairs to Anne.

“Gatorade?” she said when I showed her what I’d brought. I knew she would’ve rather had water, so I quickly explained to her what had happened. When I finished, she said, “You’re kidding. The guy took these out of his own fridge?”

I nodded.

She immediately took one of the bottles and cracked it open. I did the same, and we both drank in long gulps. After, as we drove back down the canyon, Anne remarked that that had been the best damn Gatorade she’d ever had, and I couldn’t disagree. We’d gone looking for some reassurance that whole world didn’t suck. I think we found it in the kindness of a grizzled ski-bum who runs a t-shirt shop out of his own home in a tiny little community on top of a mountain.

I also think I should’ve bought a t-shirt from him…