We leave Holden just as we arrived, with most of the village surrounding us, hugging people they had met only a few days before. This rare community completely and immediately accepted our beanied, flashy group of non-Lutheran ski bums, and as I walk up the steps of the school bus, I can’t help but feel a part of it. The bus fishtails its way out of the village, and we wave through the dirty rear window to our new friends. The peaks we came here for, I realize, are not what I will miss the most.