Getting Old
I’m 33 years old. That isn’t old.
But some days I feel old and those days are happening more and more frequently.
There’s two types of age in my mind — physical and mental. You physically get older, it’s unavoidable. Mentally, at some point you become an adult and to me, that means doing what society tells you people your age are supposed to do. If that’s what you genuinely want, awesome, but if not, it seems stupid.
A Skier's Quest For PWDR
Back country skiing isn’t easy. You want the best, untracked, freshest snow and you won’t accept anything else. Thing is, you have to work for cold smoke. You earn your turns. You skin, you slog, you sweat. You don’t feel your legs screaming. You don’t notice the ice cold air flooding your lungs with every gasp. It’s you, the mountain and you’re paying your dues. With every fucking step, you pay your dues. Snow so deep that you can barely make forward progress? Good. Cliffed out? Awesome. Steep tight trees that you can barely thread a skin track through? Fucking fantastic. The worse the up, the better the down. I want the mountain to fight me every step of the way because it’s just going to make those turns I’m earning mean that much more, feel even more perfect. Chairlifts are for sloppy seconds loving weaklings. Sleds can’t get through the trees. Helis are for pampered old people.
Risk, Loss, Mourning, Skiing
JP Auclair died this week.
He was skiing in South America and his death was only one of five people killed in avalanches this week.
Right now there’s rallies for democracy happening in Hong Kong. ISIS is butchering people. Putin is annexing Ukraine. Walruses have arrived in amazing numbers on a beach in Alaska because climate change has reached a point where there aren’t enough ice floes for them to rest on. There are really important, scary things happening all over the planet. Things that matter.
But JP died and that’s what’s stuck in my head.
