Where in the World is Chloe Johnston?
The last time I wrote something on here was well over two years ago which is such a surreal statement in itself. After dedicating two years of my life to documenting my thoughts in this format it became wholly unused overnight. But I come back to you as a changed person.
I left this blog with a penchant for pens and witty anecdotes. Somehow I’ve come back with a love for work knives and cursing like a sailor.
Though I have taken a number of hiatuses over the years, this has been the longest period of silence you could say. Both on this website and even within the pages of my journals. That’s not to say I haven’t had any thoughts but instead, I’ve had neither the energy nor the mental capacity to continue writing in such a long format.
Before I left you, I was in the beginning stages of working towards my Masters in New Media Journalism from my home in central Florida—excited for what my future in the world of marketing or journalism had in store for me. I now talk to you from over two years in the future, living back home in Florida, where I’ve completed my Masters degree while traveling the world working as a ski lift operator.
I should probably start from the beginning though, there’s a lot to catch up on after all.
While completing an assignment sometime in January of 2022, unhappy with the fact that I was still living in Florida, it hit me. My degree was online which meant, really, I could be doing this anywhere why oh why was I doing it in Florida?
Later that evening my mother suggested I apply to work at a ski resort. Being from Southern California originally, I had started snowboarding at around eight years old. I wasn’t any good at it but I do love the snow. So I scoured the internet, applied to around 19 different resort jobs across the country (ranging from retail to ticket scanning), and received a phone call two days later. This part of the story is pretty fast-paced.
Within one to two weeks, the exact time of which I can’t remember, I was on a plane to Wenatchee, Washington where I would start my work as a first-year lift operator at Stevens Pass Ski Resort. I spent the next two and a half months living in a hotel room in Wenatchee, commuting three hours to and from the mountain every day to press buttons on a multi-million-dollar machine.
There’s obviously more to the job than just pressing buttons, something I didn’t entirely realize until I had taken my first steps onto the snow but I was in love nonetheless. My role included setting up mazes/queues, raking/building ramps, bumping chairs, picking up fallen kids, and, most importantly, pressing buttons at the right time.
Although it wasn’t very glamorous to be working nine-hour days to then take the bus home to do my homework, it was one of the best experiences of my life which is why, when my season ended in mid-April, my plane ticket to do it all again in Australia was already booked.
Before the start of the pandemic, my goal after graduation was to move to New Zealand or Australia for a year. I was not successful initially, well with an ongoing pandemic, but I now managed to not only get ahold of a visa but a job within a company that had employee housing. It just made so much sense even with the added complication of grad school looming over every spare minute and social activity.
I started my second season in mid-June of 2022, living next to a paddock that was often full of kangaroos in Jindabyne, New South Wales, Australia. At the time, I was nearing the end of my grad school program and after my last season, I had officially decided to write my Masters thesis on the ski industry.
My fascination with the ski industry only grew as I worked within the same company in a different country. I got to see firsthand how different mountains could be from each other because, although the job was the same in essence, I was met with a completely different order of operations at this resort.
In my research I found the term “ski culture” being thrown around quite a bit but that’s just an over generalization in my opinion. Ski culture can’t be broken down into one category or identified as one whole. If anything, each individual mountain operated around its own unique culture which became even clearer as I hopped from resort to resort.
Though living in Australia was amazing, my distaste for the summer months motivated me to keep chasing winter. So instead of using my work holiday visa for an entire year, I made my way back to Washington for a second round at Stevens Pass. This time though with a completed Masters degree.
I thought for a moment when I re-entered the country that maybe I should search for a job within my field and also one with health insurance. Only to find out that starting pay for someone with a Masters degree in most jobs I looked into was $15 an hour or less. For context, my mountain was paying me now $21 an hour to snowboard and press buttons.
It should be clear as to why I continued to work in the snow.
Another season in Washington was spent living across the street from the mountain, no longer having to commute so far each day, doing avalanche control before the mountain opened when appropriate and working as a chair lead. As my first season without homework waiting for me, I found myself lacking more motivation than usual.
I spent a good number of days off laying in bed trying to find something to get me moving because, unfortunately, snowboarding where I worked had long lost its appeal. I started posting on TikTok more regularly as an escape from my brain and it took off. Social media has always been an escape into a world adjacent. There’s a comfort I find in posting into what feels, from one end of a screen, like a void.
Though I consciously understand that people do view my videos, evidenced even more by people who began recognizing me at work, I liked the thought that I was speaking to an invisible audience. I still do.
We’re getting closer to the present now, because after my second, and last, season in Washington I moved to Wānaka, New Zealand to do it all over again. At the time, I was well into my second full year of winter and somehow still not sick of the snow. Miraculously enough.
Prior to moving to New Zealand, the plan was to go directly from Wānaka to Switzerland or Japan for yet another winter. It was only after commiserating with other Americans that I sadly discovered how difficult it is for Americans to get working holiday visas into other countries apart from Australia and New Zealand.
Both of which I’ve already used without this knowledge, obviously.
So, knowing that I would not be able to continue my journey into other foreign countries, I briefly played with the idea of finally having a summer.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t stay.
To be completely honest with you, I really didn’t know what to do with my life. As I’ve already established, I detest high temperatures, and although New Zealand remains cooler throughout the year compared to Australia, I couldn’t see myself enjoying the beaches even with their beauty.
Instead, I booked a one-way ticket back to the US and signed contract with a mountain in Ludlow, Vermont working as a lift operations supervisor. That said, you may be wondering why I’m sharing this blog post from my home in Central Florida even though the winter in this hemisphere has not yet concluded. Well, that story is worthy of a post in and of itself but it all boils down to bad management.
So here I am, back at the drawing board. I’ve not yet decided whether five seasons in the snow will be the end of this particular journey just yet. Though I long for a health and dental plan, snowboarding for work is just so much more appealing. I know it’s damn near impossible to wrap up two whole years concisely but that’s the best I can do for now.
Where I’ll go next is still a surprise but I’m a firm believer in the saying, “if it’s meant to be, it’ll be.” So I guess I’ll just have to see what the road holds but for now this road will have blog posts on it because I have so missed placing things in this corner of the internet.