“Things feel very normal to me,” Pearce said.

The past few months, much of which Pearce does not remember, have been anything but normal. On Dec. 31, Pearce, a rising rival to Shaun White who was expected to make the United States Olympic halfpipe team and compete for a medal, fell and hit his head (he was wearing a helmet) while practicing a trick in Park City, Utah.

A helicopter flew Pearce, unconscious, to the University of Utah Hospital in nearby Salt Lake City. The front half of his shoulder-length hair was shaved so the recesses of his brain could be drained of fluid. His family was summoned immediately. Painful questions about whether he would live slowly gave way to uneasy ones about how his life would be.

This is how, for now. Pearce walks without assistance, a little gingerly but sturdily enough to navigate the stairs to the familiar bedroom in the barn. He looks a little different now, too. His hair, after being shaved to one length, has grown back to the top of his ears. He wears bold, dark-rimmed Oakley Frogskin frames with prismlike lenses. The vision in each eye is fine, but the eyes themselves are a bit out of sync, not quite tracking together.

“My eyes are a little sketchy,” he said. “But they’re better than they used to be. They used to be scary blurry.”

Pearce says he does not remember the accident. He does not remember much from the weeks before the injury, including Christmas at home. He remembers nothing after the injury until the first week of February, when he was flown from Utah to Craig Hospital, a brain and spinal cord rehabilitation center near Denver.

He does remember watching White win the Olympic gold medal. Scotty Lago, a good friend of Pearce’s who had had far less big-event success, won bronze. It was tough, Pearce admitted.

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But there is no memory of the moment when he learned just how severe his injury was.

“I never felt sorry for myself,” Pearce said. “This is kind of what I signed up for when I started snowboarding.”

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He vows that he will snowboard again.

“Obviously, I won’t be doing all the things I was doing,” Pearce said. “Hopefully, I can still do some of the tricks.”

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Pearce’s promising comeback has not included a recalculation of his long-range ambitions. His family is consciously keeping him concentrated on the here and now.

“There is little use thinking about the past, what could have been, or what may be in the future,” Simon Pearce, his father, said. “He has stayed focused on the present moment. And it feels like it is working.”

For months, Pearce has undergone rehabilitation and therapy, both mental and physical, often for six or more hours a day. More recently, he went to a Denver-area gym, too, riding stationary bikes and playing basketball. He left only after making at least 7 of 10 free throws. That sort of therapy will continue at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in nearby Lebanon, N.H., and at a local athletic club. Pearce’s rehabilitation continues to focus on vision, balance and memory.

Pearce cannot fully appreciate how far he has come, however often he watches videos that his family shot of him in the hospital in January. But his parents and three older brothers — Andrew (28), Adam (25) and David (24) — are still amazed.

That hit home when the traveling party — Kevin, Adam, their parents and their snowboarding friend Jack Mitrani — arrived at the airport in Boston. Pearce walked through the airport and carried his own bag.

They arrived at the family home about 9 p.m. Saturday. About 30 friends and family members greeted them with cheers, hugs and a few tears.

On Sunday, after a short hike up Gile Mountain, the family gathered for supper. It was a rare reunion. Simon and Pia generally alternated trips out West. Andrew, a manager for the glass-blowing company founded by Simon Pearce, went back and forth, too. Adam left his job as a snowboarding instructor in Utah and has barely left Kevin’s side, even moving back to the barn. (Among other things, Adam provided updates on a get-well Facebook page for more than 48,000 fans.) David, who has Down syndrome and has long provided perspective and inspiration, mostly stayed in Vermont and worked for the family business.

But one horrific accident, and one celebratory homecoming, brought them together again.

“Sitting at the table, for me, was a big thing,” Pia Pearce said. “ ‘Wow, here we are, back at our round table, sitting together.’ ”

On Monday afternoon, everything seemed normal. Kevin Pearce, after taking a nap in his old bedroom in the barn, was sitting in the grass out front with the snowboarder Ellery Hollingsworth. The sun was shining. Pearce was smiling.

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Yes, it was good to be home. Awfully good.