The Sickness
March 31st, 2009Posted in Skiing Everywhere
Yesterday I had to drop in to a local building supplier’s yard to get something for a project I’ve been avoiding since December’s first snows. Ten days into official Spring, everything in the yard was still covered with several inches of snow from the weekend’s storms. One of the employees there, a person I know who skis frequently, thanks to his boss’s understanding and sympathy, was shoveling snow off buried merchandise when I stopped near him. I said, “I’ll bet you’ll be happy when real Spring finally arrives, you must be tired of clearing away snow.”
“Never!” he replied. “There can never be too much snow.”
As skiers do, we got to talking about skiing and his recent trip to Jackson to take his son to ride the new tram. And then about how great the skiing had been up at Targhee the past week. He said he’d be happy to shovel snow off lumber all summer if it kept snowing and he could keep skiing. I hope he keeps happily shoveling snow for many more weeks.
His outlook makes perfect sense to me. He and I both moved here because of the generous snowfalls and the quality of the snow. Our valley is filled with people who share this joy in winter and snow. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet I’ve learned of the great numbers of kids I grew up with who have ended up in Georgia, Florida and Texas. How did they lose their joy in winter? They too used to love snowstorms and snowdays off from school. Where did they go wrong? Or is it me who went wrong?
It is obvious that it is a good thing that most people would rather flee winter than embrace it. Many people here in the West are rightly concerned about how many people have been moving into the snowy mountain areas over the past couple of decades. If all those people who headed south had headed to the Rockies, the Sierras, the Green Mountains, or other ski oriented locales, we’d probably be in a fine mess of sprawling towns and over crowded highways.
Lots of people I know think my neighbors and I must be sick to live somewhere it snows practically every month. Nobody enjoys being sick, so I hope this snow or ski fever we’ve contracted doesn’t spread too widely. It’s a pretty rugged bug. Once it takes hold, most people are done for.
With the snow guages in the mountains around here reporting several new inches of snow since last night, I feel my fever rising. I better call in sick today.
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