From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jennifer Hickson. The Moth is true stories,

told live, often by people unacustom to addressing a room of a few hundred to over a thousand

strangers. But when the tellers take the stage and the audience quiet down, nervousness

dissipates and the story takes over. In this hour, we'll hear four stories. A man is caught

up in the life of a very famous 19th century poet, a woman travels to a spa in New Mexico

where clothes are optional. A daughter tries to surprise her mom at the World Trade Center

one September morning. And this first story about a ski slope and a superhero. Bobby Stoddard

is a carpenter from Vermont. He told this story for us at a show we presented in East Lansing,

Michigan in collaboration with Michigan Public Radio. Here's Bobby, live at the Moth.

So I am from Vermont and I love living in Vermont. And in order to love living in Vermont,

you really need to love winter. I'm guessing all of you feel the same way. I love everything

about it, you know, the smell of the wood stove. But it's really the snow that makes it

for me. And my favorite winter in Vermont was 1999. It was a big snow year and I was a

part-time carpenter and a full-time ski bum. And the other thing other than being a big

snow year that made that a really amazing year was our local ski mountain, Bolton Valley

went bankrupt. And Bolton Valley is at the top of a steep, windy mountain road. And the

only reason you would go up there is to go skiing. And if they're not running the lifts,

no one's going up there. Except for me and some of my friends because we like to hike

for it because if you love skiing, you love powder. Powder is the church. And if powder's

the church, then the holy grail is fresh tracks. And if you're hiking up an abandoned ski

mountain, you're going to get fresh tracks all day. And we did. We got them all winter

long. We would hike that mountain. And fresh tracks are when you ski down and nobody

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