Reports by Month – Page 21

November 10, 2019November 16, 20192019-2020 Season, November, Sunday River

Time Changes. I Resist.

Upper Sunday Punch

The plan was simple: when Daylight Saving Time ended, time would change but my daily routine would not. Instead of gaining a one-time extra hour of sleep, I would wake up and go to bed “an hour earlier”. The time would change but I would not change with it.

The only challenge was not lapsing forward into “new time”. That entails waking up everyday at 5:30am, even on weekends. Especially on weekends (a good habit during ski season). Equally important is maintaining a 9:00pm bedtime to ensure I do not push my internal clock forward into “new time”.

Lately, YouTube has taken too many hours away from my life without providing much positive benefit. Endless video recommendations auto-play until I get tired and go to bed; sometimes when I should have, often far later. Which would be fine if it was improving my life and the behavior was intentional. It wasn’t.

You do not magically gain an extra hour when you wake up an hour earlier. Not literally, anyways. You just move a block of awake time from the evening to the morning. But if that hour changes from passive screen time to active intentional time, then I have gained much more than an hour. I’ve gained part of my life back.

November 9, 2019November 9, 20192019-2020 Season, Earned Turns, Jay Peak, November, Powder Day

Narrative

A narrative is a story or account of connected events. The narrative of every ski season varies significantly year to year, but each season’s narrative always includes a beginning. Let’s call today the preface to a new narrative.

My own narrative became contaminated. I developed a false self narrative and I followed the script off a cliff. The story began to frame me instead of me framing the story. The narrative no longer felt like my own. But in an insidious way, it still felt like I was writing the story. A default program stuck in an infinite loop; the story would not progress, the next page could not be turned.

I cannot control the narrative of the ski season. But I can (exert the illusion of) control (over) my own narrative. I can choose how to present the narrative arc of the protagonist. I can stop the record from skipping incessantly. I can lift the record off the turntable and break it apart like the problematic unconscious self narrative that was endlessly repeating in my head. I choose to recast my tale.

Reach out for help.

And then reach for the next sheet of paper, reach for a pen, and start writing again.

Reach for a summit that once inspired you and then open yourself up to be inspired again.

August 7, 2019August 7, 20192018-2019 Season, Killington, May

Ubiquity & Bewilderment

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.

November 21, 2018December 10, 20182018-2019 Season, Cannon Mountain, Earned Turns, Middle Hard the Hard Way, November, Powder Day

Deconstruction

“What was I expecting?”

The thought came to me about half way up a pseudo-skin track on Upper Ravine. A few inches of wind slabbed snow had mostly covered up the skin track, but a faint outline was occasionally still visible. Getting off the track wasn’t horrible, but staying on the invisible balance beam was much more enjoyable.

I turned back and to my right. Looking up to Mount Jackson, I could see a fellow skier descending the Saddle having skinned up via Mittersill. I was not completely alone which lessened the isolating feeling of knowing that you are fucked if something goes wrong. It was simultaneously comforting and annoying.

“What was I expecting? I deconstructed everything. What did I expect was going to happen?”

Twenty years ago or so, I started saying “the only way you can understand anything is to question everything.” But the logical conclusion of doing so is knowing everything and nothing at the same time. Paralysis. The world would be a better place if things happened based on knowledge.

But knowledge doesn’t cause things to happen. Feeling and drive and motivation and passion make things happen. Knowledge didn’t make me skin up Cannon without a partner three times during this past week. Not very smart, but a helluva lot of fun. Skiing might be the last thing that I have yet to deconstruct.

The one final aspect of reckless abandon that I have left. I treasure it.

It will not be deconstructed.

November 19, 2018November 20, 20182018-2019 Season, Cannon Mountain, Middle Hard the Hard Way, November, Powder Day