I know this looks long, but it's an article out of one of last years issues of Skier. It's so ridiculously true; I read this and it makes me soo anxious for winter. (There are some references to the picture with it, just ignore them)
Who else can empathize?
Perfect snow, perfect weather, perfect clouds, perfect gear, perfect health, perfect everything. When it all comes together, conditions like these make us foam at the mouth, drop out of university, quit our jobs after Halloween, plant a zillion trees in bug-infested clear-cuts, commit crimes to afford a season's pass, and spend thousands of dollars on equipment and travel. Conditions like these keep us alive.
But he's waiting. Maybe he's relishing the moment, or following the photographer's instructions, or both. No matter what, it's the anticipation that compounds the experience; the proverbial 'I'll be back' preceding the hail of gunfire.
Whether it's waiting at the start gate, waiting for that big break, or waiting for the first big snowfall, we are all slaves - as author Martin Amis famously observed - to time's arrow, to the unidirectional and unchangeable nature of the least understood physical dimension. If the Theory of Relativity is law, time slows to a crawl at the tip of a black whole. So how to we accelerate it through excruciating October?
Sometimes waiting for the snow is as easily circumvented as a plane ticket to a snowier continent or on a private jet. If you can't afford it, you have little choice but to accept your fate like a helpless lifeboat in a hurricane. So you do what you can. You avoid thinking about winter. You fail. You run out and buy SKIER. You look at [the pictures] and then you look outside. Not the temperature disparity between the printed image and back-to-school weather. Curse. Curse yourself and your unlucky lot in life. Curse each of the twenty-three off-axis degrees in the earth's rotation responsible for summer. Curse them again. go to your local ski shop and ogle the new stuff. Try on a new pair of boots in your shorts. Feel the familiar and strangely comforting pain on your calves that you can't get from any other footwear ever created. Go home and wax your skis. Inhale. Cry. Leave the scrapings on the counter.
Plan your next trip out of the city, far away to the back country where it's cold and put and simple and beautiful and where no one will ever find you - especially if you make a mistake. So you're going to need a shovel, a probe and a beacon. Plus a backpack to put it all in. plan all the details down to what you'll have in your sandwich. Put all the stuff in your pack and leave it by the front door so that all you have to do is put on your long underwear and wait for winter. Is the anticipation killing you?
Good - it'll be sweeter when it gets here.
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