He hated the cold, and had never experienced anything like it. The bitter air slapped him in the face as he stepped off the yellow school bus that drove kids to Nashoba Valley. Hardly defined as a ski hill, its mere 500 vertical feet made up our stomping grounds. On a chilly January afternoon, two years after immigrating to America, Brolin examined the scene in front of him. I looked over my shoulder and saw him standing in awe at the base of Nashoba. A mix of fear and excitement gripped him. A rental snowboard clutched under his arm and a thin shell clung to his chest as he approached the chairlift. Unsure how to proceed, I watched as he struggled to strap in his boot to his binding. Making his way on to the lift, apprehension clenched his demeanor as he fell onto the moving chair that took him to the summit.

Snowboarding was so uncomfortable and foreign to Brolin that it had an astounding effect on his mindset. It submerged him in the present moment. Strapping in his left foot and figuring out that he was goofy, he began to point the nose of his board down the slope. His mind screamed at him to stop as he began to pick up speed, eventually letting his heel edge slip out as he fell backwards into the slope. A smile spread across his face as the adrenaline began to recede. I laughed with him as I watched him repeat this pattern.

As the weeks went on, Brolin and I began spending a lot of time together on the slopes. He slowly began to progress. We would talk about snowboarding in-between classes and constantly be thinking about that next trick we wanted to learn. Snowboarding was our common ground. It became a vessel for him to assimilate into American culture. On the slopes, Brolin felt like he belonged and was a part of something bigger than himself. The emotions he experienced strapped to a snowboard were more real than all the pain he felt before. It freed his mind from the resentment and trepidation he was experiencing in such a transitional period in his life. He was able to forget about everything else and just focus on how he was going to get down the icy slope in front of him, with a piece of plastic strapped to his feet.

After snowboarding in Massachusetts together for three years, our paths began to pull us in different directions. Brolin was sent to a boarding school in Vermont because of troubles he was having at home. Snowboarding became the glue that kept us together. Brolin would spend the weekends at my house snowboarding in Massachusetts, as well as the occasional trip up to Vermont or New Hampshire. My parents were taken by his work ethic. The passion and relationships he developed through snowboarding resonated into all areas of his life. To say he excelled in boarding school is an understatement; he exceeded all expectations, both in athletics and education. A passion for medicine was born, and as a freshman in high school Brolin set his sights on becoming a surgeon. Brolin would spend weekends and holidays with my family and me. My parents acknowledged that he was in need of a concrete support system, a family that would be there for him no matter what. So five years ago, after my parents fell in love with Jackson Hole and decided to move there, it was not a question that Brolin would be coming with us, as he had truly become my brother.

Overlooking the Tetons as we flew into Jackson Hole, excitement gripped my three brothers and I as we gazed down upon what was to be our new home. The Teton Mountain Range has a commanding presence. Never having seen such mountains, we were awestruck by the size of what was now in our backyard. Jackson Hole breeds a different type of rider, with people such as Travis Rice and Blake Paul emerging from the Tetons. Big Mountain riding scared the shit out of Brolin, and I remember his first experience riding powder.

It was an overcast morning and a storm had raged throughout the previous night. We got up early enough to catch one of the first tram rides of that day. The red metal box swayed back and forth while the wind howled past our ears. I could see Brolin’s breath as he sucked in the cold air. The Massachusetts cold was nothing compared to the temperatures we felt when we stepped out of the tram. Our bindings were nearly frozen as we clicked our boots into our boards. As soon as we dropped in, every other feeling we had evaporated, and weightlessness replaced them. Floating across the light snow, my three brothers and I weaved in between each other, laughing and spraying snow as we did. We dipped into the trees and slashed and carved our way around what was in front of us. Soon, we realized that Brolin was missing. We stopped and heard an angry yell coming from behind us. We saw Brolin stuck head over heels, with only his board poking out. He unstrapped and attempted to hike down through the waist deep snow, pointing and yelling at me for taking him into the trees. Jack, Jimmy, and I fell over laughing while we watched him somersault his way down to us.

Jackson Hole provided a fresh start for Brolin. We arrived at the beginning of our junior year to a welcoming community. Instead of being outcast for his differences, he was embraced for them. For the first time in his life he began to trust people, began to trust his snowboard, and he began to trust himself. Snowboarding became a daily routine, and we worked it out with the school so that we could ride every afternoon. We started to compete in slope and pipe competitions through the Jackson Hole Freeride Team. Snowboarding became an addiction for my three brothers and I. We pushed each other as much as possible. If one of us stepped up to hit something (usually Jack), then all of us had to follow. More than anything, snowboarding showed Brolin that limits only exist in the mind. It still blows me away to see him riding at the level he is after all that he has been through. The fear he felt snowboarding is a direct correlation to the fear he felt when coming to America. By overcoming the fear he felt on snow and pushing his riding, an aurora of confidence was acquired that translated to his character off the hill. Brolin shined in the classroom and finished high school with a 3.8 GPA.