Snow always fluffier on slope’s other side

Being unable to ski these past couple of months has given me more time to philosophize, or in other words, to become even more neurotic about how hard it is not to pursue my greatest passion in life.

As I sit in the lodge, metaphorically speaking, and focus on other less important things in my life, I’ve come to realize what a gap is left behind without skiing in my life.

I’ve found an interesting pattern through a rather informal poll of acquaintances and friends, that those of us who love the sport so much have sometimes let it take priority over other things like, for example, marriage and relationships, education, and even our sanity.

The names of these acquaintances or in come cases I’m embarrassed to say, friends, have been changed because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Christina once signed up for ski lessons just so “her boyfriend at the time who couldn’t ski, but thought he could” would take lessons too. She said it was embarrassing skiing with him because he leaned so far back. Sadly, the lessons couldn’t save the relationship.

On a ski trip to Snowbird years ago, Janice and I found ourselves in line 30 minutes prior to opening on a bluebird, 12-inch powder day on a mountain with which we were completely unfamiliar. As luck would have it, and perhaps a touch of destiny, a ski patroller boarded the chair with us. We heard him talking on the radio about opening up some runs. Not ones to pass up an opportunity, we casually asked him where he was going and he replied, “Are you ladies looking for some powder? Follow me.”

He took us on the three most memorable runs of our lives, through untracked fields of powder under rocky peaks of the Wasatch. Then he left us. And my friend couldn’t stop thinking about this Man Who Gave us Powder. Weeks after we returned home, still obsessed, she sent him a letter, not even knowing his last name. He called her and invited her back down and they had a wonderful romance that was about as deep as the powder they skied, and therefore only lasted until the snow melted.

On perhaps a less romantic note, my friend George once told his wife via radio that he was stuck in a tree well and would catch up with her in a bit just so he could take a few runs without her.

Then there is my slacker friend who took six years to go through college, or at least that’s what his parents thought. They sent him money for tuition and expenses thinking he was failing his classes, but he was taking the winters off and using the money to go skiing all over the country with his buddies. He eventually graduated. And got a job in the ski industry.

My friend Curt, who moved to Hawaii, recently sent me an e-mail saying that he longed to go skiing so badly that he recently went skiing on 1 inch of ice on Mauna Kea because the closest snow was more than 3,000 miles away.

Above all, the importance lays in keeping things in perspective, which can be a problem for my friend, Renee, the psychology major. She finds a supreme feeling of purity when she is skiing powder. This feeling is so deep that she can’t find satisfaction in the present and suffers from constantly seeking the better powder run. She finds herself reduced to tears if she so much as thinks there is better snow elsewhere.

This idea that the snow is always fluffier on the other side of the mountain can get the best of any of us. I take comfort in these stories of slightly scrambled priorities, knowing I’m not the only one out there. Just remember, the snow is also always icier somewhere else.