Missing You Smells Like Folgers Coffee and Mountain Spring

 For me, trips up to Copper Mountain are about honoring my dad’s Summit County roots and looking up at Peak 6, where we scattered my grandma’s ashes on a rainy summer day.

Veronica Bianco (she/her) ‘27

Copper Mountain and Steamboat Springs are located on the ancestral lands of the Ute people.

Grandma Vi reading to me in Oregon’s Opal Creek Wilderness (circa 2007)

In June 2022, I traveled to Copper Mountain, Colorado, for my grandmother’s memorial. It had been seven years since I was there last, and it was the first time I would be there without her. 

She showed me how to live with love, passion, and curiosity. She was my greatest role model and one of the best people I’ve ever known. There are few things I’m prouder of than being her granddaughter.

For most, skiing Copper is about turns, powder, friends, big air competitions, and overpriced lodge food. For me, it is about all those things, but it also means so much more. It is the resting place of my grandmother, the hometown of my father, and the site of some of my earliest and fondest familial memories like walking around the village at night or dinners full of laughter in my grandma’s condo. 

I visited Copper plenty of times when I was a kid to see my beloved Grandma Vi, who was born in Denver in 1925 to Sicilian immigrants. She moved to Copper in 1975, just after it had been established as a ski hill. She ran the post office for 27 years, turning it into a hangout spot for ski bums and locals alike. The resort’s seasonal staff sent her postcards when they weren’t at Copper, which she hung up in the windows. “I got to see so many people come and go, see young people grow up. It was a job, but it was a fun one,” she told the Summit Daily News in 2005 when she retired at 77. 

She raised my dad in Copper: a fun, albeit strange upbringing. He went to Summit High in Frisco, nestled in the Tenmile range. The stories he tells capture what it was like to grow up in the beginnings of what is now one of the most popular skiing counties in the country. He and the few other kids there would skateboard for miles down the east side of Vail Pass after the state laid fresh pavement to widen I-70 and throw snowballs at cars leaving the resort.

My dad skiing Copper Mountain (1976)

I didn’t realize that Copper was at all well-known until I got older, and my friends who ski talked about wanting to go someday. When we were at Copper, skiing came second to spending time with Grandma Vi in her condo in Summit House East (or, as we affectionately refer to it, Cement House East, an homage to its brutalist nature). My brother and I would run up and down the spiral staircase that connected a small loft to the rest of her little home. In the summer, hummingbirds would flit about the red feeders she hung up every year. Tall windows faced east, towards the Tenmile Range. She loved that view. When she got older and had to be on oxygen because lung issues and living at almost 10,000 feet weren’t conducive, clear tubes snaked around the carpeted floor as she moved about in the small kitchen or tidied up the messes my brother and I left in our destructive wake. They were happy times.

Our visits to Copper stopped in 2016, when Grandma Vi’s health made it clear that it was time for her to move to an assisted living facility at a lower altitude. She resisted, having no desire to leave the mountain air of her beloved Tenmile Range. But, after one too many ER visits, she eventually gave in, agreeing to relocate to Steamboat Springs in the Yampa Valley, where another one of her sons and his family lives. She was still surrounded by mountains, but not the ones she loved most. She settled in alright, but joked about escaping and hitchhiking back to Copper. 

Visiting her in Steamboat meant that we traveled to the northwest corner of Colorado through unfamiliar mountains. Although we often flew, once we made it into a road trip and drove all the way from Oregon, passing through the Cascades, the Wallowas, the Boise Mountains, the Wasatch, and finally, through the western slope of the Rockies. 

There was a piano at Casey’s Pond, Grandma Vi’s assisted living facility, and she would sit next to me for hours on end while I played. Sometimes, knowing that I was headed to Steamboat soon was the thing that kept me playing. I learned songs because I knew she’d love them, and often played for her over FaceTime when we were apart. 

The last time I saw her was in the summer of 2021, when the mountains around Steamboat were green and the skies were blue. The last time I called her was in the car on the way home from a rainy soccer game in April. 

I was in Colorado for soccer the weekend before she died. I was a junior in high school and was taking recruiting visits, going to showcases, and trying to stay afloat while taking too many hard classes. It was one of the most intense periods of my life. 

I knew that the two games I played in Colorado that weekend were going to be two of my most important. I had visited CC the weekend prior and had a feeling that it was home. I knew that whether or not I would receive a scholarship offer partly hinged on my performance. I managed to pull it off and received an offer the Monday after I got back. It was an easy choice, and I committed on Tuesday morning. I was over the moon.

Grandma Vi died a day later.

Grandma Vi, my brother, and me in Summit House East (2011)

In an instant, I went from having just realized a years-long dream to experiencing an extremely significant and impactful loss. I found solace in that before she died, she knew that I’d decided to go to school in her home state, near the mountains she loved so fiercely. It felt a little bit like fate, and in a way, affirmed that I had chosen well. It felt right.

She passed one of her favorite rings down to me and I’ve worn it on a chain around my neck every day since the day she died. In June 2023, I got a tattoo of a violet on the underside of my left wrist. I wear a thin purple anklet around my left ankle. I wrote “GVI PDX” on my wrist tape before games this season, a reminder of who and where I come from. My middle name is Violet, which my parents gave me in her honor. These little tributes help me feel connected to her, and remind me to live and love like she did. 

Her death meant I would return to Copper for the memorial, seven years since I had been there last. 

Being back in Copper brought me peace and gratitude even though the person who had defined the place was gone. 

Her memorial was held in the boxy, odd-looking church there, with the Tenmile Range standing out the window behind the altar. Everyone in attendance wore purple, her favorite color. Many people spoke, and the day was one of love and remembrance. Here is an abridged version of what I said: 

She is Folgers coffee and Cream of Wheat in the morning, and a banana before bed. She is her cameo ring that I’ve worn on a chain around my neck every day since she died. She is a Sunday drive on a Tuesday through the mountains and valleys of her home.

I see her in everything. I see her in my dad, her son, who, like her, makes everyone feel like someone. I see her in my mom, one of her favorite people in the world. I see her in my brother’s steady rationality. I see her in all of you. And sometimes, in my best moments, I see her in myself too. I see her whenever I write my full name. I see her whenever I take out the ironing board. I see her in hummingbirds. I see her in every postcard, stamp, and post office. I see her in lupines, in orchids, and, of course, in violets. I see her in every mountain, from Oregon’s Cascades to her beloved Tenmile Range.

She instilled in me a love and a longing for the mountains, and a love and a longing for Colorado. I’m going to college here after I graduate high school next year, and because of her, it feels like I’m coming home even though I’m actually leaving the only one I’ve ever known.

After we leave here today, our celebration of her doesn’t end. The truest way to celebrate her life is by being like her. We have to celebrate by loving like her, by thinking like her, and by laughing like her. We all have a responsibility to pass what she taught us on to the next. As long as there are bits of who she was in the world, there are bits of goodness, of joy, and of peace. 

She asked that her ashes be scattered on top of the Tenmile Range, which meant that we had a long, strenuous hike ahead of us the next day. We hiked about eight miles on part of the Colorado Trail to get to the top of Peak 6, where we spread her ashes on the light green, wildflower-laden grass. We made sure to scatter them in a place that had a clear view of Copper. After an emotional moment, clouds started to move in, and it began to rain. We practically ran down the mountain as a few drops became a lightning storm, and made it back exhilarated and worn out. 

View of I-70 and Tenmile Range from Copper Mountain (2023)

The next time I went to Copper was in December 2023, when I went skiing for the day with some friends from college. It was the second time I had been there since Grandma Vi died, and the first time I had been without my family.

And, still, she was everywhere. She was in the entrance off I-70, a familiar sight that, when I was younger, meant a return to one of my favorite places. She was in East Village, where we had celebrated her 90th birthday on a sunny day just before she left for Steamboat. She was in the dark green metal staircase at the entrance of her old building. She was in the aspen groves and the deep-cut avalanche chutes on the Tenmile Range across the highway. And, of course, she was at the top of Peak 6, where we had stood and scattered her ashes on a warm June day, before the mountains were blanketed in snow, about a week after what would’ve been her 97th birthday. 

Years ago, when Grandma Vi’s health was declining, my family used to talk about how great it would be if she moved to Portland and lived with or near us. It never really was a real possibility though. Whenever I asked my mom why she just couldn’t come here, she told me that my grandmother just wouldn’t leave the Rockies. 

Yampa Valley, Colorado (circa 2021)

And so, today, I see her in every mountain. At home in Oregon, I see her in Wy’East every time I drive across the Fremont Bridge on a clear day. I see her in the steep basalt cliffs that rise on either side of the Columbia River Gorge. I see her in the jagged peaks of the Three Sisters and Mt. Washington in Central Oregon. I see her in the Wasatch around Great Salt Lake when I pass through Utah on my way to Colorado. I see her in the desert mountains around Phoenix and in the rainforested Olympics in Washington. I see her in Iceland’s glaciers and Austria’s Alps. I see her in Rabbit Ears Peak near Steamboat, in the mountain pass road that we would take just for fun on a clear day. I see her in Tava Mountain and the Front Range, knowing that beyond them and to the north are the mountains where she made her home. 

And, forever, I see her in the mountains that loved her and that she loved so dearly back, the ones that define Summit County. She is in the Tenmile Range, and, most of all, in Copper Mountain itself.

Granda Vi and me walking on the beach (circa 2007)