Living the Dream

It’s a challenge.  For years, we’ve been spring skiing the same trail in the same way with the same lines. You knew the bumpers would hold court on the skier’s left, both on the middle and bottom sections. Man, do they love that final section where they could show off for the Umbrella Bars. It…

When I went to Kent Pond the other week to launch for the first time, I was all stoked to enjoy the beauty of nature right from the boat launch. But the joke was on me because right behind the treasured bench was a bag of unattended—you guessed it—dog poop. How nice of someone to…

I woke up ready to go for my regular morning walk—just a quick jaunt out the door for a few miles to get my circulatory system up and going. Usually, I just throw on the appropriate footwear for the weather—this week, it ranged from flip-flops to snow boots—and throw a coat over my pajamas. I…

It had been years since we were all together. A decade and a half since we had all been scattered to the wind, each of us going our own direction, traveling wherever the wind may take us. To Colorado, to DC, to Toronto, to California, to Okemo. They had all been rookies together, ski patrol…

A surrendering laugh erupted. You know, the kind where you try so hard to make something happen, but you just have to give up and laugh at the silliness of it all—The old lipstick on a pig or making lemonade from lemons. Fake it until you make it. These are all classic terms for when…

I had ridden bikes all day with a couple of friends. In my memory, it was one of my friend’s birthdays, and we were working on her goal of being able to ride Yo Vinny. Not without putting a foot down because that section of ladder around the big rock would always be tight.  But…

Spring looks a little different this year. Never mind that the rain stole all the snow off my lawn way before I was ready to put my Nordic skis away for the season. Or that all the local snowmobile trails shut down because the water bars are now exposed, and no one wants to ride…

The sign went up this week: a beautiful diamond sign, construction orange with a reflective black border. In many ways, the sign brings uncertainty, a harbinger of what will come over the next few weeks and months. We don’t really know how big the monster it warns of will be—or how long it will be…

Gliding through the forest, I gently rub my hand against the bark of the nearest tree. It doesn’t matter the season; no, it does not. Whether the tree has leaves or a whole bunch of moss, it is filled with such beauty I am sometimes at a loss. “Wow,” I will say over and over…

We lost a revered ski friend this week who passed with his skis on. I worked with Dan in Ministars over two decades ago. Since the BF and I left the Ramshead team, we’ve bumped into Dan in the woods more times than we can count, especially since all those years together at Rams gave…

It’s completely rare, but we left Killington this past week. We went skiing—at another resort.  We always joke that we all get this Beast365 with the Ikon attached, but rarely venture out of town to use it until our west coast vacation. I mean, there are several iKon resorts in Vermont, but you seldom hear of Killington folk making…

We all do dumb things in our 20s, right? When you are testing the boundaries of life to see which lines are flexible and which are legit. But in your 20s, you don’t have any experience in life, and you certainly cannot imagine listening to those who went before you. You might not mean to…

As we came through the mid-station the other day, the lifty handed us a sticker and asked if we would put it on the cabin for him. Not really paying attention, we took the sticker and looked down. The sticker announced the final days of the Skyeship. That 1990s art gallery in the sky is being…

I can feel my shoulder blades clenching together, harshly forcing my shoulders open. The tightness extends down my spine, stiffening my back to the point where it’s hard to rotate around my lumbar spine. My arms drop from my shoulders, aching pain, and I can feel the tingle all the way down to my fingertips.…

I pull my hood over my pompom and duck my head down as low as I can. My body is in the lowest squat I can manage with my ski boots on, and I can feel my tips rising off the snow as my weight drops back. Extending my pole grips out in front of…