Standing atop the Superstar Glacier, I gazed down the bump ridden landscape and contemplated… nothing. Nothing at all. When did it stop being astounding?

“Can you take our picture?”

I obliged the trio of young ladies, providing them with snapshot fodder for their Instragram posts.

The thought occurred to me that I should also record the moment with a photograph. But why? Would I post it to Facebook to show all my skier friends what they were missing? An ego post from a self curated life which is rarely engaged in truly amazing spectacle? The picture wasn’t intended to be used for conditions reporting for others nor creating a memory for myself, which were the original intentions of this blog. I thought to myself, “Fuck that shit.”

And then I took the picture.

But I took the picture with this post in mind, a post that has been brewing for months. A post about when the content creator of this blog (and perhaps those of many other ski blogs) lost his inspiration. And why. But without providing any insight into how to rekindle said lost inspiration. For what this site once was. For what skiing once meant. For what my perceptions of reality once were.

This post is also about a shifting culture and the implications of living life through lenses and screens. What pictures once were and what they have become. Reflecting on the past vs. bragging about the now. Why do we post? Why do we read? Why do we care? I have more questions than answers.

Before everyone had a phone in their pocket with unlimited high-quality digital film, photographs were special. They documented things rarely seen. We shared them with reverence, providing others a glimpse into the most important moments of our lives.

We spray a never ending stream of pictures at everyone we know. Our friends and family have no reference point for what is actually special, kind of interesting, or rather mundane. It is all so amazing! The most important aspects of our lives are given equivalence with the least. When everything has high importance and meaning, nothing stands out. Instead of pictures showing the momentous, they show the momentless.

The more ubiquitous pictures have become, the less I have been interested in taking them. It is difficult to find motivation to take more pictures when you can google anything in the world and scroll through an endless page of images. I am not adding anything unique to the online multimedia landscape.

The best I can do is turn the camera around and show the world how happy I once was in that briefest of moments. Look at me! My life is amazing! No, it isn’t. Neither is yours. Rather, it is amazing that we have lives.

Nowadays, I find myself choosing to quietly enjoy the bewilderment, awe, and amazement in silence rather than reaching for a camera. I’d rather relive my memories in solitude than type them out. During this past season, thesnowway.com was filled with observations about life rather than observations about skiing or conditions. It will continue to be that way.

I’ve never posted less during a single season. Yet, I’ve never had more to say.