When the snow starts swirling around, I fondly reminisce about the winter 30 years ago that I spent as a ski bum in Vail, Colorado.

Tourists on the chair lift would see my season’s lift pass hung around my neck on a dirty old shoe lace and they would salivate.

“Do you work here?” they would often ask.

Not one to disappoint, I’d tell them I worked on the “bowl patrol.”

“You know, avalanche control,” I’d say. “We blow stuff up with howitzers and then at dawn we get to make first tracks in the fresh powder.”

By this time they would want to strangle me; secretly wishing they had given up the day job and broken free of corporate America, at least for seven months of winter.

And then I’d tell them the truth.

On the bowl patrol we cleaned toilet bowls. We scrubbed those commodes and urinals thousands of times a season. But hey, we skied for free.

By the end of the season, I was having so much fun telling the howitzer story that I sometimes stopped telling the truth.

Preseason, I’d answered an ad in the classified section of a skiing magazine. I started off working in Vail flipping burgers at McDonald’s. They fed me and I had a nice place to sleep. From my condo, I could watch the gondola inch its way up the hill.

I so yearned to ski every day and work at the ski area, so I switched jobs, even though I’d have to clean a few commodes and urinals.

While I’ve held about 40 jobs, working at Vail was one of the few times I felt fully appreciated by an employer.

There was a free breakfast (bacon and eggs) and lunch (burgers and fries), free skiing, and we were given a locker to store our skis.

We worked four 10-hour days – with three full days off – and were able to ski an hour a day on the clock. I skied 49 full days and a total of 100 partial days during that special snowy season.

I refused to work during sunset.

Alpenglow is incredible. The 13,000-foot elevation Gore Range was lit a divine purple as the sun set. The air was crisp and pure and there is no equal to that glow.

After a couple of days, the other bowlers felt the same way.

We finished after dark and since Vail has no night skiing, we donned battery-operated beacons and skied a couple thousand vertical feet down the mountain in the dark, lit only by our headlamps.

The light on our heads illuminated little. There is nothing more glorious than the absolute quiet and solitude of skiing in the shadows after dark.

We received a 10 percent discount at the beer distributor and discounts for lift tickets at ski areas, including Aspen Ajax, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin.

I took a chairlift to work and lived in this paradise. I was there in time to see the aspens change colors in late August and to ski in short sleeves during the spring.

Spring corn snow was like skiing on ball bearings and I became weightless as an astronaut in the back bowl powder snow.

Two weeks before Halloween, my legs burned as we skied the single open trail at Keystone.

By the end of the season, I was in the best shape of my life.

The life of a ski bum is not what it once was. It’s just too expensive to still live in a ski town. When I recently visited Vail on a summer trip, I couldn’t believe the growth.

We called it Disneyland in 1986 and Vail has grown so much since then. I don’t think I could even attempt to repeat the experience I had then.

A co-worker at McDonald’s confided that the walls of Vail Valley were getting closer together by the day. She was soon gone.

After the first week, they called me “Booger.” I heard it yelled from above me when co-workers passed by on the chairlift.

I complained that it was a mean-spirited nickname from the flick “Revenge of the Nerds.”

I was told that Booger was the coolest of the nerds. That’s when I accepted the nickname.

With that moniker, I’d become part of an exclusive club – more so than the tourists spending $5,000 for a week at our snowy Disneyland could dream of.

So winter turned to spring and while I didn’t get bored with skiing, I got tired of my purposelessness, living for the moment and not considering the future. Believe it or not.

I yearned to do something else – to use my mind – rather than scrub porcelain.

I came home to Chester County with a ski bag full of memories.

I had given it all up to play in the snow. I was a bum. I lived for the moment. And it was good.

Bill Rettew Jr. is a Chester County resident and weekly columnist. Although his knees creak and his skis are 26 years old, you might see him out at Doe Mountain (never Bear Creek) sometime this season. He may be contacted at brettew@dailylocal.com