For Quechee resident Kristen Lessard, organizing volunteers for the annual Woodstock Wassail Weekend is a fantastic way to get to know area residents and visitors, and to welcome the holiday season. With its milestone 40th anniversary fast approaching this December, this year’s Woodstock’s Wassail Weekend is sporting renewed energy and expanded event offerings targeting families, long-time residents, and visitors to the area.

With the long days and nights of the New England winter approaching, Wassail Weekend represents an opportunity for us to enjoy a bright and cheerful event of the season. The event brings light and good cheer to downtown Woodstock, with the hope that the festive mood will help carry us through the long winter until spring returns.

Last year’s Woodstock Rotary Gala, with Quechee resident
Kristen Lessard, Mary Bourgeois, Belinda Needham-Shropshire

The newly formed Woodstock Wassail Committee, composed of area businesses and volunteers from Woodstock, Quechee, and surrounding towns, has been meeting monthly throughout 2024, and the group is excited to share the reworked event on December 13-15 in Woodstock. The committee is working with the Woodstock Area Chamber of Commerce – the event’s main sponsor – to continue the parade’s legacy, and the annual Wassail Weekend Getaway raffle has already kicked off its ticket sales with gift certificates to area businesses and restaurants, and a weekend at the Woodstock Inn & Resort. Thousands of people from around the country have historically attended the weekend’s festivities.

Recruiting volunteers, including outreach to Quechee residents, is about to get underway, and Kristen has a number of strategies in mind to seek out volunteers. “One of the things I’ll probably do is to post a request on the Quechee FB page,” she says. Kristen is excited about the return of more equestrian events in the annual parade this year, one of several enhancements to the Wassail event, along with a new crafts fair to be held inside the covered bridge downtown. “The committee was brought together much earlier this year…we’re working hard to bring this [event] to a new level.”

The lighting of 400 luminaries on the Woodstock green organized by the Woodstock Rotary Club adds to the festive flair, and the iconic Wassail Parade will take place on December 14 at 2pm, featuring elaborately decorated carriages reminiscent of a Currier & Ives Victorian celebration.

As a member of the Woodstock Rotary Club, Kristen has found that volunteering in community events since relocating to Quechee in 2015 has given her the opportunity to really get to know her neighbors, both in Quechee and in the Woodstock area community. “There’s so much opportunity to do good things in Quechee,” she says. “The Rotary Club has always been involved in Wassail, and there are a number of volunteers from Quechee who volunteer on the Wassail project.”

Fellow Quechee resident and Rotary volunteer, Belinda Needham-Shropshire, echoes Kristen’s appreciation for the Quechee community. “Quechee is halfway between Woodstock and Hartford, and the reason I’m part of the Woodstock Rotary is because I grew up in Bridgewater, and went to Woodstock High School,” she says. “My husband and I were looking for a home along the Route 4 corridor, and we fell in love with Quechee because it was easy to get to my mom in Bridgewater and close to his work.” Belinda notes that she and her husband can walk to downtown Quechee, and were frequent visitors to the Quechee Ski Hill with their children. “It’s been a perfect location for us for the 27 years we’ve lived here, and we’ve met a lot of great people.”

Belinda appreciates the beauty of Wassail Weekend, including the many horse-drawn carriages, the beautiful period costumes, and the caroling. Residents around the Green open their homes to display holiday decorations as well. “Two years ago, the Hallmark Channel came to film some footage of the event, and a visitor told me that it really was like a Hallmark movie,” she says. There is something for everyone at the event: “Children come out to join the parade with their dogs, and the Green is absolutely stunning when the luminaries are lit,” Belinda adds. “It really gives you the spirit of the season and makes you want to give your neighbor a hug.”

The event draws inspiration from the traditional English Yuletide beverage, “Wassail”, historically a communal bowl of hot spiced cider, ale, or wine passed around to celebrate community and togetherness. This ancient tradition remains central to the Woodstock celebration today.

Another aspect of the tradition, though rarely practiced today, is ‘wassailing’, which involves either singing door-to-door or blessing the apple orchards in the countryside to summon a good harvest the following year. According to the Woodstock Wassail Weekend website, British villagers believed that the spirits who lived in the apple orchards needed to be appeased during the winter months with twilight processions and a bowl filled with the spiced Wassail ale or cider to insure a successful harvest in the year ahead.

The annual Wassail parade during Wassail Weekend features horses, festive cheer, and community spirit. PHOTO FROM 2015 BY ABBY ROWLEE

One milestone event this year has been the restoration of the star on the top of Mt. Tom. The original wooden star, in place and traditionally lit November through March, has been replaced with a metal version, and will continue to be a part of the Wassail Weekend celebration as it has for the past 40 years. The Woodstock Rotary raised the $120,000 needed to replace the star for future generations to enjoy. As a former president of the Rotary Club, Kristen applauds fellow Rotarian, Norm Frates, and a team of volunteers for getting the new star in place with the help of a large crane.

Other events planned for the weekend include a candle light walk through downtown Woodstock, with a bagpiper descending from Mt. Tom to the Green, children’s stories and ornament making, a book sale, music and singing, a portrayal of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, carriage rides, a yule log, holiday artisan’s market, traditional Wassail punch tasting, and fire pits and s’mores stations.

Many partners come together to make the weekend a success, including Billings Farm & Museum, the Woodstock Inn & Resort, Mascoma Bank, Rotary Club, Pentangle Arts, and the Town of Woodstock, along with many local arts venues hosting musical events. Kristen notes that Quechee residents are welcome to join the Wassail Weekend effort, as well as Woodstock Rotary, to become involved in this and other festive holiday events in the community.

Join the festivities at the upcoming (40th annual) Wassail Weekend on December 13-15! The Wassail Parade will take place on Saturday, December 14 at 2pm. For more information, visit the Woodstock Wassail Weekend website at woodstockvt.com.

Harry Gorman has had a hand in the story of Vermont Spirits since its beginnings in 2004, when Duncan Holiday, the founder of the Quechee-based craft distillery, expressed interest in starting the company. Together, they put an idea into motion, and today, it’s a legacy that sticks with the company on their newest journey: turning one of the Upper Valley’s oldest commercial buildings into Harry’s Cocktail Lounge, named after Gorman himself.

Up until devoting his time and crafting abilities into distilling at Vermont Spirits, Gorman was a carpenter specializing in restoring old properties and the plumbing inside of them. In 1988, Gorman had built a house in his neighborhood in Barnet, Vermont for Holiday, and they had become friends during their time as neighbors. In 2000, Holiday introduced the idea of opening the distillery to Gorman, who was in Ireland working on a project at the time, but expressed his potential interest. Later that summer, they decided on a timeline that would work for both of them, with a goal of opening Vermont Spirits to the public in 2004.

Harry Gorman, at the bar in Harry’s Cocktail Lounge.

Gorman initially helped by building the distillery in Barnet, but Holiday wanted to involve him more in the business, and Gorman agreed. Gorman started out as an apprentice, then became a distiller, and throughout the years, went on to be an operations manager and is now the company’s master distiller. In addition to his distilling skills, his carpentry and plumbing skills still come in handy to maintain the mechanical aspects of the distillery. Gorman says, “My role is doing lots of different things, keeping the mechanicals operating, and working because I put them all there, so I know how they work and how to maintain them. I try to take the load off the other distiller as much as possible.” Gorman is also a board member of the company and the company is owned by many investors, including himself, and his job as a board member is to represent shareholders to the board.

With Gorman having been with the company from the start, he has also seen the vast and important changes it’s gone through over the past twenty years. Holiday stepped down from his position in 2008, and a new CEO, Steve Johnson, took over until 2018. “Companies change and the people who run them change,” says Gorman. “For the continued growth and expansion of the company, we chose a new CEO [in 2018], Randy Carlson, and a management group to help run us and build our company into something bigger. In the last five years it’s grown a lot.”

The company makes spirits derived entirely from maple sap and wild juniper, and other ingredients special to Vermont. “They are a one of a kind thing in the world,” says Gorman. Vermont Spirits is currently distributed in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, sold at boutique distributors across the U.S., and available online.

Vermont Spirits was originally headquartered in Barnet and eventually moved to Quechee in 2009 because of a law that had changed, allowing them to sell products from a tasting room housed in the distillery itself. The original Barnet location was tucked away and hard for customers to access in the winter and during mud season, and Quechee allowed them to have more foot traffic and expand their customer base. The company has been successful in expanding their business with Harry’s Cocktail Lounge in September, right next door to the distillery in Quechee Gorge Village. Since Gorman has been with the company from the beginning, the Vermont Spirits team thought it was only appropriate to name the lounge after him.

The plank house, now the home of Harry’s Cocktail Lounge, was built around 1790 and is believed to be the oldest commercial building in Windsor County. Over the years, it’s been a trading post, a family home, and a retail outlet. “We’ve watched it over the years and have always thought it would be great to have it a part of our complex,” says Gorman. With Gorman’s background in carpentry and building restoration, he led the project of bringing new life to the plank house as it became Harry’s Lounge. The walls are made up of wood planks that are three-inch thick boards and anywhere from 10 inches wide to 25 inches wide, all exposed in the lounge and bar area. Gorman also created an outside deck connecting the two buildings for outdoor enjoyment for customers in the warmer months. “When you go into Harry’s Cocktail Lounge, you’re sitting in a piece of history. It’s a really amazing old Vermont building and our products represent

Gorman hopes the lounge will allow tourists and locals to embrace what Vermont has to offer, he says. “We get a lot of tourists, which is really important to us, but we also love having the local people come in and talk to us and having Harry’s Cocktail Lounge will only help that happen.”

You may have read about the passing of L. John Davidson, Quechee Lakes’ founding visionary, in a recent QLLA online newsletter. As his stepdaughter and the publisher of the Quechee Times, I am in the unique position to tell a more personal story about what made John tick and about who he was at his core. Granted, I am writing from childhood memories coupled with the grace of wisdom that comes with having lived many years of life, myself, so this is just one perspective. I have also asked my older stepsister, Mary Davidson Graham, his daughter, to add her tribute (see sidebar). John had six “children”: four daughters (one died at birth), a stepdaughter, and a stepson (my brother). Sadly, Mary and I are the only two alive today, so we are the ones here to share our memories of John and of the outsized impression he made on us and on all who knew him.

John Davidson

You may or may not know this, but John was only 5’2” tall. Despite his short stature, however, he was bigger than life in so many ways. I’m not going to lie, anyone who knew John knew of his intensity. As a child, it was not always easy to understand how he could go from 0-60 over seemingly insignificant things. However, this is where wisdom comes into play. I have observed over the years that those who feel things most intensely have simultaneously an incredible gift and a troubling curse. The reason we have all had the great fortune to enjoy this magical place called Quechee Lakes is because John felt things so intensely and every detail was significant to him. He wanted families to enjoy life fully here, surrounded by the backdrop provided by Mother Nature and combined with the modern amenities that could bring families together in fun. No detail was insignificant to John, because creating this experience for families was sourced from his core being and big heart…and is what drove him to excellence.

As a child and even later as a young adult, I never understood how on earth John found himself immersed in some of the wacky projects he pursued. What about going on a literal treasure hunt for gold deep in the Amazon jungle? Did he find gold? I don’t even know, but the stories he shared were priceless!

Or how about the other treasure hunt where he raised a literal sunken treasure ship…unfortunately no one considered that the silt bottom (vs. a sandy one) allowed the treasure to sink so deep that the bounty could not be retrieved. Oh, well. One cannot place a value on that kind of experience!

He went on to develop other real estate locations, but he really had the outsized drive to immerse himself in globe-changing projects…like securing the patent on pasteurized eggs, for instance! Unfortunately, as with many blessings if taken too far, they become curses. John’s inordinate attention to detail and his drive for perfection often kept him from realizing his greatest successes.

As mentioned, John had a huge and generous heart. To his dying days, whenever we spoke on the phone, he would tell me that he was “this close” to making it big and that he would make sure I would be “set for life.” Even while blind and in his 90s, he never gave up trying.

While the financial security would have been nice, the greatest inheritance I received from this very little big man were the examples he set. First of all, as someone who also feels things intensely, I have learned how not to behave in certain situations. However, what left the biggest impression on me, and has shaped who I am to this day, is how he embodied the importance of having guts and grit. Guts to just go for it – whatever “it” is for one personally, and grit to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles no matter the outcome.

This playground called Quechee Lakes is one of his incredible legacies. That I have the privilege to share who he was at his core with you within these pages speaks to the legacy we all hope to shape – how we will be remembered after we’re gone. This little big man did good!

Reflection on the Early Years

Fathers have a way of putting things together. They can put things in perspective, support you through a new job interview, or give advice whenever you need it. However, this perspective – and the resulting gifts – left me thinking how grateful and lucky I was that he was there and listened. Challenged by the move from Andover, MA, to Hanover, NH, and Quechee, VT, at age 12 with my two younger sisters, I was not sure what was on the horizon. In retrospect, it was a mystery full of excitement, adventure, and loving nature. Experiencing skiing for the first time, we laughed hysterically, watching Dad go straight down the Quechee ski hill with no fear and land halfway across the street to where the clubhouse is now. Driving through the fields as he was envisioning the first condominiums on Hard Road, I always marveled at what could be next with his vision and dreams. Together, we always kept a close watch on any wildlife that would be off at a distance when scouting Quechee and hoped that our intrusion was not interfering with them or hindering their safety. These memories and adventures, along with so many more, keep things in perspective with gratitude and affection.

~ Mary Davidson Graham (John’s daughter)

After Fall Fest and on my way home, I drove past Quechee Gorge Village and was flagged down by some Hartford High School seniors waving pom-poms at the entrance advertising their bake sale.

As it turns out, the Village was bustling that day, with an outdoor antique market and a bake sale full of goodies. The Hartford High School Class of 2025 is fundraising money for their senior class trip in the spring: they’re choosing between Boston, Portland, or Lake George for a long day trip. The seniors are split into committees to price out and plan itineraries for each of the trip options, and the student council will vote on which trip they want to take. After the fact, I found out that the class raised just over $1,000 from the bake sale!

Hartford High School seniors Dakota Smith and Izabella Sirois.

If you’re interested in supporting Hartford’s senior class as they fundraise for their trip, consider sending a donation to Hartford High School Student Council Class of 2025: 37 Highland Ave White River Junction, VT 05001 (Memo: Senior Class Trip).

Editor’s Note: In my quest to get to know Quechee even better, I am setting a goal for myself to spend a day out and about in the community each quarter. Whether that’s attending an event, meeting some new friends, or just wandering around and seeing where the adventure leads! “Editor’s Day Out” will be a new ongoing segment in the Quechee Times that is my way of immersing myself in the Quechee community, sharing my experiences with you, and creating some memories along the way. And hopefully, you’ll get to know me a little bit better, too!

After a somewhat subpar foliage season last fall, the Vermont hills did not disappoint when October rolled around this year. Yellows, reds, oranges, and browns were in full force, and there was no better way to enjoy them than to hit the windy roads – warm enough still to have the windows down, and just cool enough for a cozy hat. So I took off for Quechee Club’s annual “Fall Fest” on October 12, and a joyful, sunny autumn afternoon of fun awaited me!

At Lake Pinneo, dozens of families gathered to enjoy games, food, music, wagon rides, crafts, and conversation. When I arrived, cheerful Quechee Club staff members and a clear jar of M&M’s greeted me, collecting guesses for a prize. The total number of M&M’s in the jar ended up being 866, and at the end of the day, the adult winner was Eileen Kirk with a guess of 882, and the child winner was Mary Malinn with a guess of 856.

Fall Fest brought in just over 450 people this year, and was filled to the brim with fun and smiles. I took a walk around and grabbed some photos of the fun in action!

If you were in elementary school in the 1960s, chances are you were one of nearly 50 million people who watched the historic launch of the first astronauts, known as the Mercury 7, into orbit around the Earth. All of those original astronauts, including John Glenn and Alan Shepard, have passed away, but their legacy of space exploration and the search for life on other planets, including Mars, is firmly established through the continuing work of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

For Quechee resident Stephen Gorevan, a robotics engineer and co-investigator with the Mars Science Laboratory Mission at NASA, the Mercury 7 launch inspired a lifelong career supporting NASA space exploration. “For me, it was like, “Wow!”, and I was hooked,” Stephen says, remembering watching the launch as a young child on a television placed on the stage in his public school cafeteria. “I didn’t want to be an astronaut, but I did want to be part of our efforts to go to the Moon.”

Stephen Gorevan

Stephen initially thought that his chances of joining NASA were slim because all of the programs were based in Texas, California, and Florida, and he was from New York. “I thought, ‘they’re not going to let me get involved’. So I went to music school, and forgot my dreams of working at NASA,” he says. Eventually, pursuing his lifelong dream won out, and Stephen left music school and transitioned to studying engineering, earning a master’s degree from Columbia University. “My best friend offered to start a business together, and in 1983, we founded Honeybee Robotics. We were young upstart kids who were studying robots in college, and at that time, businesses like IBM, 3M, and FedEx all wanted to automate.”

The stars were aligned for introducing robotic engineering to space missions as well. With the tragic explosion of the Challenger spacecraft, NASA decided to turn the dangerous jobs over to robots. “I got an appointment with a NASA employee just by serendipity and got my dream job at NASA,” Stephen says. “When President Clinton announced that it looked like there might be life on Mars, it opened the floodgates to explore Mars with robotic devices. Suddenly, I found myself going from a small company in New York to helping NASA explore Mars.”

Honeybee Robotics supported the 2004 Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars, supplying scientific instruments on both missions, which allowed the collection of new data not possible on previous explorations. “My job was to send data collection commands to the rovers exploring Mars,” Stephen says. According to NASA, Spirit and Opportunity confirmed that water was long standing on the surface of Mars in ancient times by studying the rock record, an indication that life might have been present on the ‘red planet’.

Stephen continued his work with three more rovers – Curiosity, Perseverance, and the Phoenix Lander, exploring craters and other areas on Mars. Right from his cabin in Quechee, he now sends daily commands exclusively to the Curiosity rover – the most advanced rover NASA had designed to date when it launched in 2012. “When it’s my turn to ‘uplink’ a command set to Curiosity, I am specifically acting as a Payload Uplink Lead (or PUL) sending a program to an instrument suite on Curiosity named SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars),” Stephen explains. “The SAM team decides they want to run an experiment on Mars and a team of engineers like me participates in a careful execution of what the science objectives are.”

Stephen prepares two days in advance of the uplink process to be sure the program is correctly designed. “The day of uplink, I am looking out of my picture window [in Quechee] with Moosilauke in the distance, and I am online with about 50 engineers and scientists as we refine our commands over the course of an eight hour day, culminating with the commands being sent to Mars by large antennas in California, Spain, and Australia,” he says. Stephen notes that the uplink process is intense because ‘no mistakes’ is the goal, but working remotely from the bucolic Upper Valley helps ease some of the tension. The whole process of implementing the computer program some 140 million miles from Earth takes several hours from uplink to receiving results. Curiosity is looking for ancient habitats on Mars that would have been suitable for life fossils of amoebas and microbes, but its primary mission is to study rocks, dirt, and geoformations, as well as minerals like granite, iron, basalt, and sulphur.

So what are the space rovers learning? According to Stephen, NASA’s #1 priority is to understand the mystery of the origin of life. “If any other planet is going to support life, it’s Mars because it’s so close,” he says. “What we have proved so far is that there were seas, lakes, oceans, and rivers on Mars. Anywhere on Earth where there is liquid water, there is life.”

After decades of exploring Mars and analyzing the data, an important discovery is that the ultraviolet and cosmic rays hitting the surface of Mars are so intense that humans would not survive being exposed to them, but still there’s hope. “We’re close,” says Stephen. Ten years ago, an instrument Stephen programs – the tunable laser spectrometer – discovered high levels of methane on Mars. “Methane can be produced from volcanoes, geysers, and microbes. Scientists suspect microbes, because they show up on many mornings, and there are no volcanoes on Mars.”

Before working on Curiosity, Stephen worked for 20 years on the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers. His group of Honeybee Robotics engineers designed and built the Rock Abrasion Tool pictured.

NASA’s work continues with new missions to Europa (a Jupiter moon), Venus, our Moon, and unobstructed observations of the Milky Way. As a member of NASA’s Curiosity Science Team, Stephen works from his home in Quechee and often travels to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. He recently sold Honeybee Robotics to Blue Origin, a space exploration company owned by Jeff Bezos.

Future NASA missions will gather actual Martian rocks for analysis and bring them to Earth. Still, it’s likely that if humans were ever to live on Mars, it would have to be underground, and any outside activity would require a space suit. “I admit, I prefer to do my planetary exploration from my kitchen table,” Stephen says.

For more information on the Curiosity mission, visit NASA’s website science.nasa.gov.

Even with technological difficulties during an interview over Zoom, you can absolutely tell that Nancy O’Brien has a friendly, outgoing personality; her energy shines right through the screen. This attitude is just one of the many skills the Vermont native possesses and uses as Quechee Club’s director of Quechee Ski and Sports School at Ski Quechee. After 17 years as a ski instructor, O’Brien is coming into her first full year in the role of director, and she feels right at home.

“My dad started taking me skiing when I was two,” she recalled with a laugh. Through the winding landscape of Gilman, Vermont’s backwoods, he would ski, with toddler-O’Brien in tow in their trusty toboggan. “Skiing is a way to keep his spirit alive.”

O’Brien’s love for the winter and the outdoors started when she
was little, and she would accompany her father
on ski outings and toboggan rides through the snow.

However, it wasn’t just her father who motivated her love for the sport; O’Brien’s mother made certain her children would thrive in and ultimately love and welcome the winter season. At the time of this interview, O’Brien’s mother had just passed away, which O’Brien interpreted as a message of hope that her mother was still with her, a snow angel watching from above.

“I know that the universe has a way of making things happen at just the right time,” she said. “My beautiful mom…instilled my love of all things winter and had me outside on cross country skis just about every day as a child.”

Both of her parents dedicated countless hours to volunteering at the local ski tow and skating rink in town, which further cemented her love for community involvement and skiing. “My love of sharing the passion and fostering opportunities for youth in the community to love being outdoors and active – especially in the winter – came from their dedication, commitment, and passion,” she said.

At age 14, O’Brien’s parents encouraged her to start ski instruction on her own at Bretton Woods, and she spent her teen years teaching young children the art of the slopes. Through this experience, O’Brien was further inspired to venture into all types of skiing, including backcountry, snowboarding, cross country, downhill, and Acroski, also known as ballet skiing. “I was never very good at that one,” she admitted with a laugh.

This dedication to trying new experiences propelled O’Brien to pursue educational heights as well, obtaining a BS in Human Services with a concentration in child and adolescent psychology, and a master’s in Business Administration. Through all of this, skiing remained an aspirational aspect of her life, eventually leading her to meet her husband, Sean O’Brien.

“We met as ski instructors, with a group of ten kids at Smuggler’s [Notch],” O’Brien said. She admitted that in that first week together, she knew Sean was trying to impress her, but it worked so well that others noticed their developing connection. “I had to leave early one week because my dad was sick,” she explained, “so I had to leave on Thursday, and that following Friday, one of the parents came to Sean and asked, ‘Where’s your wife?’”

24 years later, the couple is going strong, sharing their passion for both volunteering and skiing. For years, they have volunteered together at both the Ottauquechee Elementary School Friday ski program and the Hartford middle and high school ski and snowboard varsity teams.

These interests don’t end at their generation, though; both of their sons are active in the local community as well. “Giving back to our community and sharing this passion is a family tradition,” O’Brien said. “Both of our children, Ian and Cavan, teach at Quechee Ski and Sports School and volunteer for the Ottauquechee School program on Fridays as well.”

O’Brien isn’t alone in this cyclical tradition of family involvement with skiing over generations. At Quechee Club, there are various family members who have experienced Ski Quechee programs and then promptly proceeded to become instructors themselves. This year alone, 22 people who had attended the ski school as teenagers applied to help out as instructors. In total, there are 75 instructors who work under O’Brien’s guidance.

“I love the culture; it has such a family community that not only our instructors feel like family, but our students and their families do too.” she shared. “There are always new faces, always smiling. In addition to our very dedicated group of core employees, we also employ college students and high school kids.”

Nancy O’Brien

Learning from these youthful instructors is what keeps O’Brien’s mind fresh and ready for the new winter seasons that approach. “I’m always open to new things, to learn more from students and instructors than I do through books or videos; I love listening to everyone’s ideas, watching my students and how they learn and absorb,” she said. “It’s such a great opportunity to be around kids.”

Nancy included that being outside with her own children has helped her in her personal life as a parent. “I have a better mindset and feel better,” she said. “We’re not stuck at home, and it doesn’t even matter if it’s exercise or not; just being outside is beneficial.”

As the days get shorter and the light departs earlier and earlier, winter can be a difficult season to endure. O’Brien said one of the best ways to make the most of winter is to get out of the house and get some sunshine while you can. “It’s not just skiing that I love,” she said. “It’s not the gliding, not the way it works, but the whole experience, being outside in the winter when others are hibernating: I love being outdoors and I love life in the winter.”

“Skiing is such a metaphor for life,” she added. Similar to the difficulties presented in life, O’Brien believes that sometimes you just have to go out and face discomfort head on. “You kind of have to psych yourself up and go tackle the elements; you have to gear up, put everything on, and go out. But once you get out there, the joy is just incredible.”