Molly was first and foremost a trail groomer. I’d not met Molly. I’d only spoken with her on the phone, when I called for my mom. Little Ray had met Molly at Cranmore, where the mountain had a reputation for “advanced trail-grooming technology,” as Molly put it; she’d been a snowcat driver at Cranmore before she took her technique to Stowe. Now Molly was driving what they had for piste machines at Mount Mansfield and Spruce Peak.

I remember when Molly first told me about the “vintage snowcat” she used to drive on the “graveyard shift,” when she’d been a night groomer at Cranmore—a 1952 Tucker Sno-Cat. I didn’t know anything about working vehicles; Molly had to explain everything. You had to climb up on the tractor treads in order to get in the cab. The Tucker had a stick shift, a clutch pedal, no brake pedal—just a hand brake. Molly had put in the radio and the heater herself. The Tucker Sno-Cat didn’t climb very well; Molly had to drive it up the service road and down each trail. She said the Tucker had tipped over a few times when she was going crossways on the hill. Foxes followed the snowcat, chasing the mice the roller scared out of the snow. The slats of the roller broke up and packed down the snow—“the roller leaves the snow looking like skiers have been sidestepping up the trail,” Molly explained. She saw the eyes of animals reflected in the snowcat’s headlights. “The game wardens say there are no mountain lions in New Hampshire or Vermont, but I’ve seen them,” the night groomer told me. She’d seen mountain-lion tracks in the snow, too; she knew all the animals by their eyes and by their hoof or paw prints. After Molly moved to Stowe, and she was night-grooming, she said she’d been on the lookout for Bigfoot Bob. He was a friend of hers, a nighttime snowshoer. His bear paws left big tracks in the snow—“as if an elephant has been blundering around,” Molly said. She was sympathetic that Bob worked all day and could snowshoe only at night, but she didn’t want him to be on the trails when she was grooming. “I don’t dislike Bob—I don’t want to kill him,” she told me.

Molly’s job sounded exotic. I wanted to go night-grooming with her. My mother told me Molly was the mountain’s chief equipment operator. Molly occasionally filled in for the guy who plowed the parking lots and access roads at the ski area. Molly would also sub for the lift operators, and she was in demand as a ski patroller, too.