Discover More from This Category: Living the Dream

My skis, hero snow

March 6, 2024
  I love hero snow. I love the feeling of safety it provides, like there is no way my edges are going to give out no matter how aggressively I throw my skis out from underneath me. I know the hero snow will be there to catch me. Maybe it is because I don’t tune my…

Livin’ the Dream: Quintessential East Coast steeps

February 29, 2024
Author’s note: I use the male gender here to describe the skiers because women are usually not stupid enough to ski Lower O when it sucks. At least they didn’t this past weekend. Living here in Killington we just get spoiled, even with a desk job. Well, a moveable desk job, that is. This morning, I have…

Livin’ the Dream: Fresh tracks, the joy of a surprise powder day!

February 21, 2024
It wasn’t supposed to snow. Like there wasn’t an inkling that there would be anything coming out of the sky at all. It was predicted to be a normal grey Vermont day, nothing special scheduled at all except for the KMS Future Stars race. But Vermont weather is never what you expect it to be.…

Livin’ the Dream: Safdie and the Killington Village: we’re in good hands

February 15, 2024
My mom had left me a cardboard box filled with papers and what looked to be just a bunch of junk mail. So I left it in my car trunk for a few weeks, procrastinating in the hope that this box would just somehow vanish instead of being forced to acknowledge its own existence. But…

Perfecting the life of a ‘ski bum’

February 7, 2024
When I first moved to Killington in the early 2000s, I was able to skin right out my door and into the woods. I mean, literally. On a snowy day, I could put my skis on the walkway, make a couple strides through the parking area and then climb a plowed berm into the woods…

Livin’ the Dream: Bodies in flow

January 31, 2024
I love a good party. And by good party, I mean one where everyone is on the dance floor, free of their inhibitions and simply loving life. The ones where your vision starts to blur and all that surrounds you is the sound of music and the feel of the dance floor beneath your feet.…

Livin’ the Dream: The weight of snowy eyelashes

January 17, 2024
  It is quiet. Almost eerily so if you aren’t used to it. All I can hear is the squeak of my skins as they slide across the snow and the sometimes random clicking of a binding or a boots here or there. The forest is so quiet I can even hear my pole planting…

Livin’ the Dream: Here’s to chapsticks!

January 10, 2024
  My dad always kept a chapstick in the driver’s side door of any vehicle he ever owned. And he must have kept one in a pocket somewhere, because I can vividly remember him being able to pass me a chapstick whenever I asked him for one. No matter where we were, my dad was…

Living the Dream: Thriving in survival mode

January 3, 2024
Living the Dream By Merisa Sherman   Last week was probably one of the most difficult ski weeks I have ever experienced in my life. I’ve skied in that much precipitous weather for one day, maybe two. But an entire week of water pouring off the brim of your hood — this was a week…

Living the Dream: Thriving in survival mode

January 3, 2024
Living the Dream By Merisa Sherman   Last week was probably one of the most difficult ski weeks I have ever experienced in my life. I’ve skied in that much precipitous weather for one day, maybe two. But an entire week of water pouring off the brim of your hood — this was a week…

Livin’ the Dream: New Year’s resolutions

December 28, 2023
  Everything I need to know about life, I learned from skiing. Right? Well, I have at least learned enough things from skiing that I should be able to translate those into my everyday life. Skiing teaches us so many things, like respect gets respect, body awareness and how (hopefully) to anticipate the reactions of…

Family traditions: trees, grumblings and all

December 20, 2023
  Getting the lights all untangled and the ornaments hung one by one never bothered me. We usually had family gatherings where everyone would take part so you could always hide in the bathroom if it got too intense. My grandmothers (both the Methodist and the Jewish one) would each spend meticulous hours opening the…

Livin’ the Dream: Sing with all the colors of the mountain

December 13, 2023
By Merisa Sherman You can see the stars overhead, twinkling against the shimmering clouds in the night sky. There are moments of clear, but this is Vermont. The clouds move about as they will, blocking different constellations throughout the evening. Almost as if by drawing your focus to different moments in the night sky, they…

Living the Dream: What’s in your car?

December 6, 2023
  Ever get to the mountain and find that you are missing an essential piece of equipment — like your boots — or just don’t have the right goggle lens for the day? Well, I have a bag for that. No seriously, I hate having everything loose in my car, especially when I might be driving…

Livin’ the Dream: A skier’s Thanksgiving

November 22, 2023
It’s that lovely time of year where we gather around a table with our family and closest friends. We fly across the country and drive for hours to interact with our loved ones or just sit staring at the parades and football games on television. Some of us go for a trot or a hike…