Winter isn’t for everyone. Some are even driven to claim they hate winter. In some ways its understandable; discomfort, inconvenience, and mother nature’s lack of hospitality are all defining characteristics of the chilliest of seasons. Skiing stands to oppose all that hostility. A way humans have found to compromise and revel in the beauty of this cold, dark season of we love.
This celebration runs through a cycle annually, new snow, deep pow, clear spring days and early summer corn. Yet it never really dies, it only switches hemispheres, giving us time to lick our wounds. From season to season to season this celebration extends forward indefinitely and back many thousands of years to a birth in scandinavia, the details of which have been fogged by time. We step into this rich and growing history, and have a sliver of time to learn basic skills, come to love the cold bite winter’s air, and ski off into golden years of slushy slopes and bluebird skies. We give voice to our experience of skiing’s, through penciled letters, key strokes, and shutter clicks.
Powder Magazine’s 40th Anniversary issue is one of those paper rags giving voice to pencils, cameras and keyboards galore. This image of mine, found etched in it’s pages. Eddie Hunter -68 Years old at the time
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In fleeting moments where our feet leave the constant companion of the earth below, we venture into an strange intangible place. A conflicted state, where one is fiercely focused and intense, yet irrevocably set along simple trajectory controlled by only one force. Moments are available in surplus, yet they pursued as a finite resource reaching complete exploitation.
Winter is Coming
Published in Highline Magazine, Winter 2011/2012
Breath drawn in through your nose instantly freezes bristling hairs to each other, fastening in an icy grip. Extremities fall one by one in an uncomfortably familier progression, as cold chills give way to the complete absence of feeling. Beneath your skis snow makes uncharacteristically abrasive sounds as though writhing in pain, it cries out breaking and reshaping under the pressure. In frozen mountain air the voice of bullwheels and steel cable also cary a different voice in frigid weather, creaking and moaning with frighting clarity and amplification.
Winter is Coming
Flying through an endless maze of stoic trees, charging forward, onward, downward.
The last turn is a forgotten history, the next turn remains unseen.
The past and future disappear, every worry and anxiety of life falls away,
the moment at hand is the only thought occupying consciousness.
Sound, light, temperature, and wind melt into the background as a single state of being.
Winter is coming
Ryan Waddell at Revelstoke Mountain Resort
