The magical power of skiing’s “in-between” moments on the emotions of skiers (like me).
Gregg Blanchard /
A little over a month ago I had the opportunity to speak at Association des stations de ski du Québec’s (ASSQ) annual meeting at Bromont.
It was a whirlwind trip, but with a couple hours free on Tuesday evening I took a quick road trip by Owl’s Head and Sutton and Orford to get a feel of the mountains and culture and lay of the land.
I loved it.
Soon I was back at my hotel room flipping through a book I had been given as a gift for making the trip.
This book.
With the sun setting, I sat in a corner chair by the window and thumbed through its pages.
It was a moment where I was more in love with this industry than I’d been in a long, long time. A mix of personal nostalgia and just remembering what got me hooked in the first place, the flame glowed bright.
Fast forward a few days and I’m back at home thumbing through the pages once again.
The feeling returns.
I reach the last page, close the cover, and realize this book was missing something. Something obvious. Something I didn’t believe at first, but something I confirmed after one more pass between the covers.
See if you can find it from a couple pages.
Do you see what I see?
No? Try a few more.
Still nothing?
Hmmm, try five more.
Got it?
Yeah, there isn’t a single picture of a person actually skiing.
No carving, no jumps, no powder slashes, no crashing gates, no dropping cliffs.
Interesting.
Here I was being as influenced by a piece of marketing as I’ve ever been and that marketing had skipped action shots altogether.
It’s a lesson I keep finding myself at when I look at my own behavior and relationship to this sport. The moments where I feel the most emotion, the most attachment, the most investment in skiing rarely come when I’m watching people actually ski.
Instead, it’s skiing’s in-between moments where I see everything else that makes this sport what it is. It’s summer road trips to closed mountains, it’s stories of the women and men who built the ski areas we love, and photo books without a single person actually skiing.