How Learning A Sport At The Resort At Paws Up Saved My Life During The Pandemic

Learning a new skill or sport during a vacation can enhance your quality of life. Sometimes, it can save it.

Just prior to the first news report out of China on a rapidly spreading virus called COVID 19, I visited the The Resort at Paws Up in Greenough, Montana.

That four-day getaway in January 2019 turned out to be an unexpected investment in my physical and mental health. Of course, January doesn’t sound like an obvious month for a trip to the Great American West. Rather, most dream of warm days spent fly-fishing in clear streams, hiking through wildflowers, and drinking wine late into the night around a firepit beneath the summer stars.

But winter has its charms. At Paws Up, you can dogsled, horseback ride, and snowmobile up a downy ridgeline of stoic pines to gaze out upon the silent world below. At night, wood-burning fireplaces warm hands and toes.

At Paws Up, I learned to snowshoe.

I loved the idea of floating atop fresh powder. Before Montana, I never had occasion to partake. Manhattan snow turns to rust-hued sludge after a day.

Inside the activities center, I was fitted with shoes, poles, a hat, gloves, and pants. Foolishly, I didn’t arrive in Montana prepared for outdoor traipsing. I thought I’d be drinking wine. Around fireplaces.

But the lodge had everything I needed for the day. They take care of guests that way.

We piled into a 4×4 to our starting point. A guide showed me how to use the poles. Like a fish out of water, I flopped around until finally getting the hang of the awkward movements. We hiked up to a rocky promontory, over a wooden bridge, through several feet of new snow. It was breathtaking. And I was breathless. Snowshoeing is an actual workout.

I flew back to New York in late January, recharged from the trip. A few days later, I took off for a month-long journey across Australia, California, and Las Vegas. Some 20 plus flights later, I returned to New York aware of the looming pandemic and its implications. Australia already had several cases of COVID logged in its biggest cities.

In March of 2019, we put our West Village apartment on the market. We sold it in two weeks. The day after we signed the contract, the Manhattan real estate market shuttered indefinitely, along with life in the city as we had known it for 15 years.

We relocated to a remote cabin in the Catskills Mountains used primarily for working and writing on weekends. The cabin sat on six acres. Perfect for the apocalypse. Or so it seemed until the short days and long months of darkness and isolation set in.

The following winter, America’s infection rate spiked to its highest levels yet. Vaccines were declared effective but unavailable, possibly for months.

I had spent almost a year locked up, working remotely with my husband. Our dog had died. We had neither kids, family nor friends in the remote rural community to lean on. The gym was closed. I had developed plantar fasciitis baking bread all day on the cement floor of our kitchen. I couldn’t walk as I normally would for exercise.

As a travel writer locked up without travel writing or human interaction, I started to panic. Then the storms came, one after another, trapping the two of us for weeks on end in three feet of snow like The Shining. In the bleak post-holiday stretch of January 2020, I had an emotional meltdown and suggested to my husband I might need to contact an online therapist. Virtual counseling, of course, because COVID.

One afternoon of killing time, I swiped through photos from the prior year’s trip to Montana. The B&W shots included the sweet huskies from an afternoon dogsledding; mountain vistas and ghost towns from a day spent snowmobiling; and shots of the bridge crossed on snowshoes.

The memories prompted a shift in mindset. The slightest tug in mood. I needed to do something. I needed to get outside. I imagined afternoons drifting across the magical winter woods of our backyard.

It took a few days to find shoes. Apparently, all of America had the same idea.

Finally, a pair of pink and white Redfeathers arrived. The next day, poles and leg gaiters.

I took them for a spin off the deck in our backyard. A stretch of woods filled with towering ash, thick white pine, and noble maples buffered our property from the neighbors.

For the next two months, I spent every afternoon with my husband exploring the woods, or following trails made by deer. They always knew the best routes around buried rocks and hidden overhangs. I trudged past frozen waterfalls and old stone walls built by the hands of farmers past. Watched the sun set across glinting drifts. Returned to a warm hearth of my own.

A quiet optimism took hold, bolstered by the endorphins of exercise. And I couldn’t doomscroll pandemic news out in nature.

Finally, in April, I received the first dose of Moderna. The second shot weeks later liberated me—us—from snowy confinement. 

Snowshoeing saved my mental health, my physical health, maybe my life. A profound outcome from a simple vacation, thanks to learning a sport at Paws Up in Montana.