Chapters of Skiing
I often joked that being an editor at FREESKIER meant knowing what was happening with every skier at any given moment all over the world. Who’s going where… and with whom? Are the conditions lining up? Who won that contest last night? Anyone throw a new trick? What’s the deal with that new film project? Did you hear that skier just got picked up by new sponsors? Where is it snowing tomorrow?
Thinking about skiing all the time makes it that much better when it actually happens. In that way I guess it’s like sex—we’re all thinking about it all the time, aren’t we? And when it happens… well, you get it. Letting the everyday skiers, the athletes, the writers, the photographers, the community that lives and breathes the sport explore the world and return home with stories to share. Those exploits define the culture and, together, the ski community collectively shapes its zeitgeist.
The experiences we make in the mountains determine what skiing is and what it becomes. Moments spent on the hill, in the streets, or anywhere, really, chasing that feeling we’re all after but none of us can accurately put into words—those moments establish the plot for the tales we tell.
The people we meet, the places we visit, the memories we create—those in-between moments bring the narrative to life, those fine details transforming a happenstance lift ride or a conversation at the bar into an animated point in time worth recalling. Again, that part is up to you. That pillow line you film, that road trip you take—hell, even that acid trip you have at the lodge—could change the course of everything. The narrative is always evolving, but that’s just the way things go: Everything in flux. What’s “cool” one day might not be so the next; the “norm” will undoubtedly be bucked…
