“I grew up in ski towns,” the little snowshoer said. “My parents are skiers. My father taught me to ski, but I was too small. On the chairlift, he never let go of me. The rope tow was too heavy for me; I couldn’t hold on. And there was an equipment problem: a shortage of skis that were short enough, of boots that were small enough, of bindings that adjusted enough. My dad had to shorten my ski poles, thus my poles were custom-made. I didn’t hate skiing, but it was the first thing that made me aware of my smallness as a burden. My mom got me some snowshoes; they were small enough, and you could make the bindings work with a variety of boots. I already had the downsized ski poles. My mom thought all the poling would make me stronger—then I could hold on to the rope tow, she said. But I loved the snowshoeing, and I didn’t have to be around all those bigger skiers. I’m very fond of ski towns,” the little snowshoer told me, “but I’ve stopped skiing. I just run, and I snowshoe.”

“How tall are you?” I asked him. “My mom is five feet two. Lana Turner is only one inch taller.”

“They would tower over me!” the snowshoer declared. His handsomeness was the most grown-up thing about him. “I’m four feet nine—only fifty-seven inches. Too small for Korea; they wouldn’t take me. They didn’t make uniforms that were small enough, they told me—another equipment problem,” the snowshoer added, as if skiing and the military had disappointed him equally. The subject of his smallness as a burden bothered him. “Would you like to try snowshoeing?” he suddenly asked me. There was only one car in the parking lot of the Thompson Cage, a VW Beetle. At the time, did they make anything smaller? As small as a VW Beetle looked to me, I still wondered how the little snowshoer could reach the pedals.

“Yes, please,” I answered him. I absolutely believed I was born to try snowshoeing; I also couldn’t wait to introduce the snowshoer to my mother. I knew I’d met a man I wanted my mom to meet. I wanted to hear her opinion of how handsome he was—“good-looking and small,” I could imagine her saying. Before I met the little snowshoer, I believed that destiny only happened in fiction. Yet here was my destiny, and maybe my mother’s.