“Pasala, pasala,” coach Jimmy yells as the players move down the field.
Large families gather in the shade from the hot summer sun beneath elaborate tents set up on the sidelines where moms hold up their phones taking videos like they’re at a Taylor Swift concert. Siblings of all ages run around with ice cream treats and bags of chips and salsa purchased from the old guy who rides around with coolers strapped to his bike. If you’re lucky, someone has a flat-top grill set up and is selling street tacos, homemade tamales and cups of ice cold horchata. The parking lot at Crown Mountain Park is always full during these Saturday afternoon games.
This is the Latino summer soccer league known as “La Liga,” a program organized by local parents who wanted the option for the kids to play “futbol” in summer and winter, and it is a full-on family affair. The coaches are passionate and highly skilled, and it’s contagious — the level of skill these kids display reminds me of the ways we pass down our passion for skiing. Even though most everyone is bilingual, it’s an immersive Spanish language experience, too, which has me on Google Translate every few minutes to look up verbs like “sacar” and “pasar” as the coaches holler directions to the kids.
La Liga is only one of many activities Levi, our 9-year-old, is involved in this summer. For as much as parents stress about getting their kids signed up for various camps before they sell out, I’m blown away by the opportunities that abound for kids in this valley with enough options that we have managed to keep our kid off YouTube long enough for him to stop calling me “bruh.”
Even better are these incredible programs that, for such a small valley, have provided our son with the opportunity to learn and grow, to make friends and memories and to have the kinds of experiences unique to a childhood in the mountains.
We kicked off the summer season with three days of glacier camp at Buttermilk hosted by the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club. The snow from the superpipe is groomed into one run with jumps and airbags for the kids to do freestyle training. They spend the morning on snow, shuttled up the hill in vans, and then head to the AVSC clubhouse in the afternoons for trampoline practice.
I hiked up one day and watched Levi and his little posse huck themselves on the smaller jumps thinking about how much cooler this is than the day camp my mom sent me to in rural Connecticut. We were relegated to mundane and seemingly forced activities like archery and tennis, oppressed by heat and humidity, my legs riddled with bug bites. There were lots of injuries too, like the time I almost sliced off my fingertip with an X-ACTO knife carving corkboard for a printmaking project, or that day I got slammed in the face with a racquet playing doubles tennis — obviously not well. I certainly wasn’t jumping on an outdoor trampoline at Five Trees in the shadow of Aspen Highlands with a golden field of dandelions as a backdrop learning how to do misty flips.
Then it was off to mountain bike camp with Roaring Fork Cycling where, due to some last-minute scheduling changes, no other kids were signed up so Levi got to enjoy two full days of private coaching. In addition to racking up some miles riding epic singletrack in Prince Creek, he learned how to balance on his bike without pedaling, an impressive skill he was able to show off when we did a few rides together last weekend in Steamboat, ideal for starts in steeper terrain.
Last but not least, Levi has waited for years to be old enough to participate in Colorado Kids Club, an adventure camp for kids ages 9-12 hosted by Camp Chip-a-Tooth, the Basalt day camp he has attended his whole life.
A sharp departure from little kid camp activities like making tie-dye T-shirts and putting on fashion shows, CKC kids head for the hills, literally, with rotating destinations up and down the valley to hike, bike, paddleboard, swim and more. A godsend for working parents, this is an all-day program that goes until 5 p.m. Levi gets mad if I pick him up early and is tired and happy at the end of the day, filling the car with chatter about the day’s exploits like little bubbles rising in a glass of ice cold, dry champagne.
As I watch his hair lighten to the towheaded blonde he had as a toddler and see the tiny freckles sprinkle across his little button nose like it’s been kissed by the angels, my heart fills my chest like an overinflated balloon, ready to pop. His blue eyes shine bright, the yellow ring around his iris a reflection of my own, a light from within ever more illuminated with these joys of childhood. To give him this, these memories, this place, these mountains we love so much and to sew ourselves into the intricate fabric of this community burns bright in my heart like the Colorado sun.
发表回复