I never believed in the importance of the buddy system until my friend got stuck in a tree well.
A few years ago, I went on a ski trip with my friend, Will. Cruising down the mountain, we felt unstoppable. We popped in and out of trees, weaving around them with expertise. As we skied over freshly fallen snow, I was grinning ear to ear. I spotted a fresh line and called out to Will, “I’ll see you at the bottom!” We had of course been advised to stay together, but I wasn’t going far. Only to the bottom of the run, and the end of the trees was nearly in sight.
Yet as I arrived at the end of the run and waited for Will, I grew nervous. After a few minutes, he still had not appeared through the trees. I began to grow panicked, wondering what might have happened to him. I continued to sit and wait, my anxiety growing with every passing minute until 15 minutes later he still had not made it to the bottom of the run. I called him repeatedly, and every time the call went to voicemail.
Distressed, I called my mom. Though I wanted her to fix everything and tell me what to do, she couldn’t make Will magically reappear. She told me to call ski patrol if he didn’t show up soon. Even though I knew she was right, I was not willing to accept the fact that he might be missing.
I continued to wait at the bottom of the run for another twenty minutes as the situation got more dire.
“How did he possibly get lost?”I thought to myself. “He’s skied here before. He knows his way around.” I figured if he had crashed, someone would have found him and called for help, so surely he had just taken a wrong turn somewhere in the trees. Maybe he was at a different lift waiting for me.
Then, in the middle of spiraling, I caught sight of Will, covered head-to-toe in a blanket of snow, skiing out of the trees. I felt a weight lift off me: He was fine. I had not, in fact, left him alone in the woods with no way out.
He looked crazed as he skied up to me. “Oh my God,” he exclaimed. “Right near the bottom of the run, I caught an edge. I went flying, and next thing I knew, I was in a tree well! I wasn’t buried too deep, but I was way too stuck to get myself out.”
Mouth agape, I looked at him as he regaled me with the story of what had just happened. “Luckily, after a while someone skied down next to me,” he continued. “I was calling out for help, and he heard, so he came up to the tree and was able to pull me out.”
I couldn’t believe my desire to chase good snow had caused me to abandon my friend, who was trapped in a tree well. I felt terrible, like I was responsible for the crash itself. That day, I learned a very important lesson about the buddy system: No matter how confident I feel that something will go right, I always have to be prepared for the possibility that it could go severely wrong. I feel confident that 99 times out of 100, Will would have made it down that run completely fine. Yet, because I banked on that, I left him alone when he needed me.
Now, I make sure to be there for the people around me. Not because they need my help, but because the more often I am there for them, the more sure I can be that, if and when something does go wrong, I can help them through it.
