The empty road ahead is an auspicious sign. The night before, a snowstorm had erased the mountains from the horizon. I’d watched it from my living room window and wondered if I’d have to cancel our family trip. Yet this morning, aside from the wintry peaks in the distance, the only signs there was a storm are the wet ground and gray sky.
I am driving my family through the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area. My husband and I have told our daughters, sitting in the backseat, that we’re “headed toward a surprise.” They proffer guesses limited to their little-kid understanding of memory, desire, and place. The toy store? Denny’s? “It can’t be the cabin. It’s not time. Right, mama?” my first grader says.
Today is the first day of spring break in March. It’s seven months too early for our annual staycation at Mt. Charleston Lodge’s cabins. We usually come here in the fall, when the Spring Mountains’ 20-degree temperature difference is a welcome reprieve from the Las Vegas Valley’s oppressive desert heat. But my daughter is right: We are headed to the cabin. I don’t tell her or her sister, though; I want to savor their slow-building excitement. Surrounded by snow, “the cabin,” as we call it, is the perfect place for my daughters to experience the winter wonderland they’ve always wanted. My husband can nurse his broken shoulder away from work. And this trip, with its promise of tranquility, is also my gift of restoration to myself.
Snow appears in patches on the landscape, and the air grows cold enough for me to turn on the heat in the car. We cruise past the Spring Mountains Visitor Gateway where a small, misshapen snowman heralds what’s ahead. I’m anxious about overcrowding as we round the bend. Mt. Charleston sees thousands of visitors eager to ski and sled when there’s snow. I like the idea of playing in the snow with other families and participating in community memory-building. That’s one of the joys of this place. However, it’s easier to have fun outdoors when you don’t have to compete for space with others.
While I wrestle with these anxieties, my daughters beg me to stop driving so we can play in the snow. There’s a hopeful desperation in their voices, like they’re concerned the snow will melt before they can enjoy it. But I can’t pull over. Cars pack the side of the road, filling every spare inch of parkable ground. They’re crammed together near the Acastus Trailhead and Fletcher View Campground. I’m concerned it will be similarly crowded farther up. I imagine how difficult it will be for us to find peace amid crowded parking lots or trailways.
My anxieties fall away when the road narrows and people disappear. Snow drapes the mountainsides. It sits heavy on the tree branches and blankets the rooftops in Old Town, Mt. Charleston’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it residential community. The entire area is postcard perfect. Minutes later, my daughters cheer and scream in the backseat as I park near the front office for the lodge and cabins.
I’m giddy too, as I pull out the duffel bags and coolers I had hidden underneath quilts in the back of our SUV. This fresher alpine air, rising landscape, and towering greenery create an ideal space for the tension coiled in my body to unfurl. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have considered this place as a retreat. My husband and I didn’t have the time to venture this way with two small children, work responsibilities, and perpetual fatigue. And I was hesitant to explore any place that wasn’t explicitly diverse and likely welcoming of a Black woman like me. But now it’s a sanctuary for my entire family to lean into ease and exploration.
We first visited Mt. Charleston, and the associated lodge and cabins, in 2020. I was consumed by the news that summer. The total COVID-19 deaths increased to unfathomable numbers each day. While protests in support of Black lives arose in major cities across the country, armed vigilantes banded together to enact their own brand of justice and policing in response. Endless doomscrolling on Twitter ensured that danger was ever-present in my mind. I became hyper-aware of my surroundings and felt unsafe outside of my home, which was feeling more cramped the longer we were isolated. I needed a place where I could feel at ease in my own mind and body, a place removed from the constant terrors on the news. I needed a refuge.
Where does one find that during a viral pandemic when social gatherings are discouraged, social distancing is mandated, and businesses are closed? The outdoors seemed like the safest place. I’ve always felt most connected to myself when in nature. I even started a garden during the pandemic to reclaim my connection to the land. However, the parks in our neighborhood were blocked off by caution tape, enclosed by newly erected chain-link fences. Living in a time of reinvigorated racism in public spaces — in the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders — augmented my need for safety in recreational spaces that historically have been predominantly white, and still are regarded as such, according to research.
Despite closures at many national parks, people were still visiting them. The local news reported an increase in visitors to Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which was already one of the 10 most visited national parks in the country. I didn’t want to go where most people were. I wanted a home away from home, and I found one in the Spring Mountains.
In fall 2020, my family drove to Mt. Charleston to sleep in a cabin and hike the empty trails. Out of caution for COVID-19 and rising discrimination, we avoided visiting the lodge, where most people gathered. Sticking to the outdoors, we marveled at towering ponderosa pines. We inspected fallen logs for insects and wildlife. Breezes softly rattled the golden aspen leaves. We wandered more often.
When we encountered other hikers, I braced myself for curt rebuffs, but the few people we saw smiled sincerely as they greeted us. At night, wrapped in my grandmother’s handmade quilts, I stargazed alone on our cabin’s balcony. My general stress, along with concerns about encountering racial prejudice, faded. Mt. Charleston was the redemptive place I needed. It was inevitable that we would return.
On our spring break trip, we check in and eat a quick lunch, then trek single-file down the road outside the cabins. Tension knots inside me as cars drift past, searching for a place to park. I can’t escape the apprehension crackling in my mind. I’ve been spending too much time reading the news once again. Since social distancing and quarantine ended, public spaces have become a common arena to release pent up frustrations. Anti-Black racism is still on the rise. I don’t want to get caught in the backlash. I need to feel like the world isn’t spinning out of control.
We hang out at a semi-secluded space we found during our second trip here. We build snow castles and decorate them with pine cones and needles while my husband snaps photos. We have a snowball fight that ends in stiff snow angels. We enjoy our little oasis.
For the rest of the trip, while my husband nurses his injury, my daughters and I play in the snow engulfing the site of the former lodge, which burned down in an electrical fire in September 2021. My daughters excavate picnic tables out of the snow and build ice castles. I bask in the cold air and take in the forest view.
Every worry I’ve been holding onto leaches into the environment. Nothing matters except the brisk air caressing my skin, the satisfying crunch of snow underfoot, and my daughters’ laughter buffeting the quietude. I’m distracted by a train of cars circling the roadway overlooking the cabins. They park illegally, and passengers get out to take photos. I wonder if my daughters and I are in them, pixelated against the snow-dusted backdrop. A local police truck arrives, and I hear the whoop-whoop of sirens followed by a muffled voice on the vehicle’s PA system. The cars leave with the police at the rear, their absence a relief.
Somewhat selfishly, I want the cabins, the mountain itself, to be our place, excluded from the growing popularity I worry will change this area from the healing space that it is. Fewer people on the mountaintop means fewer people clogging the trailheads to take selfies. Less trash frozen to the underside of the cabins in the winter or discarded beanies left roadside. It means less of a chance for the politics and violence of the world that I’m escaping to find their way up here, too. I don’t want to lose a sanctuary that cradles me when I need it. Yet this place can’t be removed from the world around it. The outdoors has always been a respite for a world burdened by hustle.
My idea of sanctuary has to evolve. Mt. Charleston being my refuge doesn’t mean that it can’t be anyone else’s. And as more people search for places to escape the world’s anxieties (or horrors), they’ll find their way up here. Sanctuaries are created spaces, shared spaces. While this space doesn’t fully reflect me — I don’t know when I’ll stop worrying about racial profiling — I’ve begun the slow work of making it more comfortable. Last year during our family trip, my husband and I attended an Oktoberfest celebration at the former lodge site. We drank pints of beer and ate bratwurst smothered in sauerkraut. We cheered on those who participated in a beer stein-holding contest. For the first time in a while, I was at ease in a community setting. With time, it could be the new norm.
Toward the end of our trip, my seven-year-old and I scamper across the icy road and trudge up to the gates of Cathedral Rock Trailhead. I take a picture of her perched, legs crossed, and chin held high, atop one of the pillars peeking above the snowpack. A few cars trickle by and slow when they see us. I smile and wave. The sun shines brightly overhead, and the only cold I feel is where the snow has swallowed my shins.
“What should we do now?” my daughter asks. We scan the area and spy a set of sledding tracks cutting through the snow. I’ve only ever heard the sledders’ laughter in the distance while we’ve played outside. The tracks lead up and across the mountainside, where the wild horses roam in spring. My daughter asks if people are up there now. I shrug and suggest we go find out. She nods, and we follow the tracks together.