The Pass Closes in October
What happens to a mountain community when the only road out is shut for five months.
The sign goes up sometime in the second half of October, and the date is never announced far in advance because it depends entirely on the first serious snow. After that the pass is closed until roughly the end of March.
There is another way out. It is a hundred and forty miles and takes four hours in good conditions.
Stocking up
The autumn shop is a genuine event. Freezers get filled in a single weekend; hardware gets bought speculatively, on the theory that a part you might need in February is worth more than the shelf space. Everyone knows who has the generator and who has the plough.
What the isolation produces is not the hardship people imagine. It is a very specific kind of competence, distributed across about ninety people, each of whom is the one who knows how to do one thing.
