Charlie Sturgis showed up to record a podcast with us recently wearing a bright red shirt that read, “Age … Is the Reason, Not the Excuse.” If you know Charlie, you know that’s about as fitting a statement as he could wear. He’s spent the better part of his life skiing, biking, building t rails, and finding ways to get other people outside. The message is pretty simple: Live fully, no matter how old you are. But after sitting down with Charlie and more recently, Katie Wright, I found myself thinking about that shirt in a different way. The two conversations had an interesting throughline. Both were about people who came to Park City because they wanted to enjoy the mountains and ended up helping build the community around them. Charlie arrived in Utah in the 1970s. He tells a great story about skiing Snowbird in blue jeans, without goggles, on a stormy day. Apparently, freezing his ass off at the top of the tram was enough to convince him he’d found his place. He eventually made his way to Park City, where he helped build White Pine into a local institution and later became instrumental in developing the trail system we all enjoy today. Think about that for a minute. How much of our daily lives here revolve around things that people like Charlie helped create? And here’s the part I love. Charlie didn’t get involved in skiing and trails because he was looking for a way to give back. He loved doing those things. He wanted to make a living doing them. And somewhere along the way, that personal passion became something that benefited an entire community. There’s nothing wrong with a little self-interest when the result is something everyone gets to enjoy. Katie Wright arrived in Park City in 2002, a generation later, with a similar motivation. She wanted to ski powder and live in a real ski town. She found a waitressing job, a place to live, and a community that would eventually shape her career. During our conversation, Katie shared a story that I haven’t stopped thinking about. When she was 24 years old, then-Mayor Brad Olch and Myles Rademan invited her to lunch. They wanted to know what she thought about Park City’s future. She was a young ski bum who had barely established herself here, and the people helping run the town wanted her opinion. That invitation made an impression. Katie went on to help build the Park City Community Foundation, eventually leading it for 12 years, before taking her work into broader civic engagement across Utah. But what struck me wasn’t her professional success. It was that somebody took the time to invite her into the conversation. I grew up here, and I’ve been fortunate to know a lot of the people who helped shape Park City over the years. One thing I’ve come to appreciate is that many of them understood their responsibility wasn’t just to make the town better while they were involved. It was to bring along the next group of people who would eventually take their place. When I served on the Park City Council, I began to appreciate how much time and energy people put into this community, often without much recognition and occasionally with a fair amount of criticism. It’s not always fun. Sometimes it’s downright thankless. But someone has to do it. And the people who came before us seemed to understand that the best way to ensure the next generation would participate was to give them a seat at the table before they thought they were ready. Park City has changed enormously in my lifetime. Some of those changes have been wonderful. Others have made it harder for the next generation to experience the town the way we did. It’s certainly more expensive. The barriers to entry are higher. And the days of moving here with a few hundred dollars, finding a cheap room in Old Town, and figuring out the rest later are largely gone. I don’t think we can pretend otherwise. But I also don’t think the answer is to spend all our time wishing Park City looked like it did 30 years ago. The people who built the version of Park City we remember weren’t simply trying to preserve the mining town that existed before them. They were trying to create a place where they wanted to live, while figuring out what was worth keeping and what needed to change. And they did a pretty remarkable job. Now it’s our turn. Maybe that means serving on a board, coaching a team, volunteering for a trail day, or showing up to a public meeting. Maybe it’s simply introducing yourself to a new neighbor and helping them find their place here. The point is that participation is what makes a community. And participation has a way of making our own lives better in the process. I worry sometimes that as Park City becomes more expensive, we risk becoming a place where people come primarily to enjoy what others have built rather than a place where people feel responsible for building what’s next. That’s not a criticism of newcomers. Most of us, or our families, were newcomers at some point. Charlie came from Chicago. Katie came from Philadelphia. Both found a place here because someone made room for them. The question is whether we’re still doing that. Whether we’re inviting younger people into leadership. Whether we’re making room for new ideas. Whether we’re willing to let the next generation do things differently than we did. And whether the people who have been here for decades are still willing to participate themselves. Charlie certainly is. His shirt was meant to be a reminder that getting older is a reason to keep living fully, not an excuse to stop. I think it works just as well as a reminder about community. We’ve all benefited from the people who came before us. The least we can do is make sure the next generation has the same opportunity to build something worth passing along. And maybe take a 24-year-old ski bum to lunch once in a while. Max Doilney is a lifelong Park City resident, former Park City City Council member, local real estate agent, and co-host of the “Ski In Sell Out” podcast. The post ‘Age is the Reason, Not the Excuse’ appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less