Thursday, November 16, 2023

Clay from the Riverbank

Old Town Square in Prague, from a 2015 visit.

I’ve been thinking about a golem.

The legendary golem that I have in my mind is a huge creature, immensely strong but slightly awkward with only vague features. In the classic way, he has the Hebrew word emét (אֶמֶת, meaning “truth”) inscribed on his forehead. Of the numerous golems in Jewish folklore, the one on my mind is the Prague golem conjured from the clay banks of the Vltava River in Prague in the 16th century by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. The Prague golem’s purpose was to protect the ghetto from pogroms, expulsion or slaughter by the Holy Roman Emperor. According to the legend, Rabbi Loew eventually demobilized the golem and stored his body in the attic of the still-standing Old New Synagogue in the Prague ghetto where he could be restored in the event the Jewish community again had need of his protection. Though the golem has had many different purposes in the various stories through the ages, in my imagination he is as close to a Jewish superhero as we’ve had, with my apologies to Moses.

The golem has been on my mind since early October. Following the shocking barbarism perpetrated by Hamas militants on civilian Israelis on October 7, I spent a significant amount of time explaining to well-meaning gentile friends the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the greater issues of the place of State of Israel in the modern Middle East, the history of the modern State of Israel, how it is that an otherwise unapologetically patriotic third generation American can feel a meaningful attachment to another nation so far away from home and so different from our own, and what my personal feelings are about all of the foregoing. In truth, the process of exploring my own feelings about Israel and the events on and since October 7 has been a valuable one, including a fair bit of catharsis, inner conflict, and uncertainty in the way that thoroughgoing introspection should provide.

My feelings about the existence of the State of Israel are as simple as my feelings about the nature and actions of the Israeli government are complex. I believe the State of Isarel to be a miracle, a blessing to my people, and it is a tremendous source of pride for me as a Jew. And no, that is not an endorsement of any particular action, attitude, or policy. Since the Roman conquest of Judea, Jews have relied on the vicissitudes of non-Jewish sovereign rulers for protection, permission to conduct business, to practice our religion, to express ourselves as a people, and frequently for the continuation of our very existence. The State of Isarel exists now despite significant overt and covert attempts by its neighbors and the British Empire to kill it in the cradle in 1947 and numerous attempts to wash it into the sea over the decades, and thanks to several truly stunning military victories against what should have been overwhelming force. The fact that a modern Jewish nation doesn’t have to ask permission or depend on the whims of a non-Jewish overlord to defend itself and has done so repeatedly through the entirety of its existence is a stunning state of affairs for the Jewish people. My heart swells.

For this reason, woven so firmly through my being, I bristle when gentiles tell me or anyone else what Isarel should or shouldn’t do. For the first time in the post-diaspora world, Jews in Israel, though free to take advice from their allies and those who support them, have precisely zero need to ask anyone else’s permission to do or not do anything. When a gentile expresses dismay at the actions of the Israeli military or its political leaders, I long to tell them that their own complicity throughout history is effectively a total abdication of any right they may have had to influence policy in or by the State of Israel, and I suspect Arabs feel the same way. To be clear, again, this is not an endorsement of Israeli actions or policy; it is an expression of a visceral and cerebral desire to stop the noise from the gentile world about what the State of Israel should and shouldn’t be doing.

Any gentile who tries to explain why shouting “from the river to the sea” isn’t a grossly antisemitic action endorsing the premeditated, shockingly horrific actions of Hamas in their desire to slaughter Jews and wipe them from the earth will get a lecture from me about their own history before I turn on my heels and disregard their views as entirely worthless. I will continue to be conflicted, challenged and made uncomfortable by the actions of the Israeli state, and I will discuss all of it and work to influence it for the better and more humane among people who do not advocate for my or my people’s slaughter.

Whether or not the body of the golem actually lies in the attic of the Old New Synagogue in Prague, the idea of its presence is informative as I consider my own feelings. Someday, perhaps we will have the need to conjure him; but not today. Today we have a modern Jewish nation state that can protect itself from the most evil of wrongdoers and secure its own future. I can only hope, after so many centuries, that Israel uses that power for the good of our people and of humanity generally. As an American, I continue to have faith that I can be a Jew and also be secure in my place in this society despite the recent groundswell of antisemitism here. Here in America, in a sense, we are the golem.

As we say in synagogue, may the State of Israel be a light to the nations. And may its people, its neighbors and all humankind see the way forward to a future of peace of love.

Friday, November 3, 2023

Existentialists Among Us

It’s like raking leaves in a wind storm. “I’m pretty sure I’ve already moved that particular leaf at least twice” I think to myself, “and it may not look like it, but I definitely cleared the leaves from this section of the lawn first thing this morning”. Surely some people, dare I say most people, would find exercises like raking leaves in a wind storm frustrating or even nonsensical. I do not. It makes me smile from the inside out and is a welcome reminder of the absurdity of life and my joy in experiencing it. Ok, I do sometimes find it frustrating when I occasionally work as a landscaper and gardener in my shoulder seasons when the effort can be transactional and the final product does need to meet a certain standard. And then I remember how ridiculously fun it was as a child to spend all day raking the maple leaves in my family’s back yard only to swan dive into a gigantic pile, thrash around in it, and clean it all up again. It is, after all, an existential exercise worth savoring, and it is a consistent experience unaffected by the arc of time through my life. Rake up (or use a leaf blower) a property into nice piles to be transported to the compost pile, look up at the many leaves still left on the branches, hear the breeze well up, and enjoy as yet another golden blanket descends onto the ground.

I do not think that it’s an accident that children, Labrador retrievers, and true practitioners of the ski instructors’ craft are existentialists. Authenticity, shared experience, and personal freedom as a means of seeking life’s true meaning are the hallmarks of existentialism, and thrashing around in a pile of leaves serves that purpose well. Unless you get a rash, which can be unfortunate. I’ll let someone else figure out how to explain scratching an itchy rash in philosophical terms, in the meantime I have a point to make about looking forward to the upcoming season of teaching and coaching in the mountains.

There are components of my working life as an instructor and coach where the objective of any particular activity is specific and measurable. I was an alpine race coach before I was an instructor, and the clock and finish order were a constant focus. I am absolutely certain that the process and experience of being a race athlete and participating in the sport do lend themselves to big picture philosophical thinking, but the necessity of being results focused in the sport does require a certain myopia. Similarly for ski instructors, certification is as close to an objective measure of a professional standard as we have in the profession, albeit a very flawed one. Working with instructors in their pursuit of advanced certification requires an operational approach and clear performance objectives, and having a philosophical overlay comes later with circumspection. It does remind me a bit of studying for and taking the bar exam – just get the thing done and think existentially after. You can watch the dragonflies dancing on the surface of Walden Pond after you pass the bar exam.

Don’t worry, I’m getting to the point.

Among the many things I love about teaching skiing and training other instructors is that we really do not have an objective measure for the success of our guests. If we really are good at what we do, it’s the enjoyment of skiing and of the process of improving and learning together that keeps us all - guests and staff alike - present, engaged, interested, and having a rip-roaring good time. It is truly joyous. When we and our guests experience some component of improved skiing or awareness of skiing in a way that brings us joy, it’s the same joy that a child or an adult feels the first time the slide on snow, and that joy definitely is childlike in nature.

There are instructors who forget that joy is the object, who don’t experience skiing at that level or don’t care to, or simply lack the skills necessary to participate alongside their guests in the pursuit of self-less guidance rather than doctrinal instruction. I feel sorry for them and for their guests. Make no mistake, there is real work involved, real focus, real effort, and real challenges in every phase of our shared endeavor with our guests, but the true prize always remains in focus when we create the right sort of learning environment. I really do believe it to be an existential exercise at its highest level, and I love every minute of it.

In my mind’s eye, I can see my friends and I at the bottom of the Deep Temerity lift at Aspen Highlands on a typically dreamy, uncrowded day, catching our breath after yet another stunningly fun run, smiling that same smile that we had wrapped around our faces as kids in a pile of leaves taller than we are. And laughing. And then doing it all over again.

Ok, this definitely is the fourth time I’ve raked up that leaf. And it’s the second time that bump threw me for a loop and made me cackle. Maybe the wind will stop for a moment and maybe I’ll have a little lighter touch next time on that part of the hill. Either way, I’ll enjoy every minute of it. And come back for more.

Looking West from Aspen, Colorado in October



Sunday, October 8, 2023

Perambulating Without Purpose


The Frying Pan River in Basalt in full autumn splendor
Where my home village is depends a bit on the definition used and to whom I am speaking. Judging on the basis of where the heart really is, my home village is a tiny little speck on the map and is one of the last remaining places in New England to engage in a very specific, oddly interesting, super cool activity from a bygone age. The village sits in the precise Northwestern corner of Connecticut, with the town’s Western boundary butting up against New York and its Northern boundary against Massachusetts. Every year the citizens of the town of Salisbury, Connecticut engage in an official perambulation – volunteers walk the boundaries of the town to make sure that the neighboring states are not encroaching or otherwise committing any sort of land grab. I love it. The very idea of a perambulation through the dense forests, deep ravines, and rocky hills of the remote and rural Northwest Corner fills me with a real sense of Yankee pride. I imagine warming up at the end of a long day of perambulating at the inn on the village green with some locally pressed warm apple cider in a way that would transport me to a slower, kinder, more wholesome place where cell service and internet speeds are irrelevant, the farm-to-table movement is known as “eating”, and non-dairy milk is an oxymoron.

This little jaunt down Nostalgia Street does beg the question: what the heck is a perambulation anyway? Can you perambulate in an unofficial capacity and without a specific purpose? How does a perambulation differ from a stroll, an amble, or a wander? And why would we care?

Technically, according to Merriam Webster, “perambulate” is a verb whose transitive form means “to travel over or through, especially on foot” or “to make an official inspection of (a boundary) on foot”. The intransitive form means simply “stroll”. So, let’s call “perambulator” one of those archaic but somehow perfectly descriptive terms, sort of like the “victualist” who makes your drinks in the tavern on the village green at the end of a long day. And yet, if “perambulate” is evocative, we still haven’t answered the usage question: how is it different from a mere stroll, an amble, or a wander?

My point here is a simple one. We can have a detailed conversation about whether a stroll is more directed than an amble, a wander lacks definitive purpose, and a perambulation takes us around the boundaries, but the effort in articulating the standard for how these terms differ requires slowing down, taking the measure of the path taken and its speed, and considering the nuances. To be clear, in my mind considering nuances is rarely something to be done quickly. One must move slowly, review the options, observe your surroundings, maybe sit over a cup of coffee and ask the friends you encounter for their view, and let some fresh air awaken your lexicographic preferences.

Yesterday was a stunning autumn day here in Basalt, Colorado. Warm in the sun and cool in the shade, cloudless, a light breeze, no crowds, little traffic, and the ever-present sounds of our two rivers burbling-by. I walked to the town center for a nice lunch at my favorite café where I bumped into and joined three of my favorite ski pros from Aspen Snowmass who were out enjoying an al fresco catch-up, milking every last warm day before we all fully commit to the approaching winter. The route I chose from where I live to our tidy little downtown was the long way around rather than the most direct route – I perambulated. I may also have strolled but I definitely didn’t wander. Afterwards, with a full belly and a relaxed mind and spirit, I may have ambled home after our long, leisurely meal and wonderful conversation.

I am not in a hurry for winter to arrive. I do hate rushing, and I do enjoy taking my time to experience the world around me and the people in it. I appreciate making the most of the remaining warm days of Autumn. And I do realize that this is a luxury of the life that I’ve chosen, especially during shoulder season. Soon enough each of us will be running around making the magic happen for our winter guests and, yes, skiing at speed with the wind in our faces. All the more reason to stroll around the boundaries when we can. Maybe I can even find some decent cider in the farmers’ market.

Saturday, August 12, 2023

In Love in the Past

The summer afternoon monsoon approaching over Carbondale, Colorado

We were spoiled as kids. Each winter of my childhood, my family would decamp to our favorite hotel in our favorite, impossibly beautiful Vermont town for a stay in December. The place was a legendary institution, a bastion of authentic small-town hospitality, and a place where understated Yankee elegance was practiced as a finely-honed craft with precisely zero pretention. The staff made us feel like family whether we were little kids or uppity college students, afternoon tea by the crackling fire in the lobby was an event not to be missed, and the semi-formal Sunday buffet dinner in the dining room was a big deal. My skiing life and career in the snow sports industry have that very particular place woven through it from start to finish. We absolutely loved it, we always felt that the staff loved us right back, and we all love it still. And that’s the problem.

My parents, my siblings and I still love that unnamed hotel for what it was then. As kids, we’d leave for home at the end of our stay already looking forward to our return and feeling that the staff felt the same way. It is still a great place, always ranked high among the best hotels of America. And yet, slowly over time, the alchemy of our favorite home-away-from-home evolved such that it stopped spinning gold, it stopped rejuvenating our deep affection year after year. In the last few years that my parents stayed there to visit me at home in Vermont, we spent more time reminiscing about what it had been like then than being enraptured in the moment. I miss it, but I miss it only as it was not as it is, and therein lies an essential lesson for each of us who work in any sort of service, hospitality or tourism business. Or, for that matter, those of us who teach skiing and riding.

An essential truism for me in my work in the ski industry is that the guest experience and the staff experience run parallel 100% of the time. To be clear, the guest experience and the staff experience are not the same, they simply track each other in lockstep in ways big and small. Our relationship with any place, with our sports, with the organization for which we work or for whom we are clients, are relationships like any other. When we love them or each other, that love takes constant attention and care like any loving relationship does. Doing so requires that we ask ourselves some simple questions that, in order to answer sincerely, require us to look deeper into how experiences make us feel, and that is true for our guests and our staff alike.

If the staff of a resort remains deeply in love with the way their place used to be, like my family, it's likely that their guests’ loyalty and affection will similarly be based only on past experiences, and there will be trouble looming. That trouble may not manifest itself in the near term and it may not even ever really affect the bottom line of an enterprise or a place, but it will be a guidepost of some diminution, some loss of specialness. Many places and organizations succeed without love in this way as our old favorite hotel has, but I cannot help but believe that at some point failure will arrive, even if only in the subtle form of the loss of conviviality, loyalty, or of the deeper meaning a place can have for the people who experience it.

Ultimately, this idea of our loving relationships with each other, with places, businesses, experiences, and even ideas has been on my mind quite a bit this summer. I haven’t lived and worked in Aspen long enough to have any personal feelings about the way things used to be, and the reasons I chose to move here and vest my ski career here remain front-and-center, confirmed each day on the hill while teaching and coaching skiing. Still, I would like to challenge my friends and colleagues, our senior managers, the officials of our towns, and even our guests, to seriously consider this idea: do you love being here, skiing and riding here, playing in our mountains and taking full advantage of this exceptional and truly unique place, for what it is now? I sincerely hope the answer is “yes” and am confident that it is, but merely asking ourselves and taking the time to answer truthfully has real value when done without apprehension, without bowing to personal inertia or to pressure to conform to what we think we should be feeling.

This summer, I have had a sense that here in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado there is a significant undercurrent of stress among the working residents. The cost and difficulty of finding housing; the increasingly in-our-faces extravagance of the wealth of our guests and part-time residents; the sense of the yawning chasm between the haves and the have-nots; and the pressure on our towns to try to maintain some semblance of balance in light of the foregoing are constant topics and sources of anxiety. More than one person has expressed the sense that Aspen and its surrounding towns have ‘jumped the shark’. In response, I frequently ask myself and others: do we love it as it is now; can we protect the reasons we love it while embracing change; and are we pursuing our ambitions for our communities and our organizations with that love in our hearts? These are simple questions requiring tough analysis, the essential details can be badly obscured, and there are no easy answers. And yet, we really must ask.

Last weekend, I caught up with a family that are ski clients of mine. The two kids are curious, smart, engaging, thoughtful and genuinely hilarious, and they are a direct reflection of their very welcoming, kind and equally fun parents. We had an al fresco dinner in a busy restaurant that is on the short list of places to see and be seen in the downtown core of Aspen, and it was low-key and relaxed in a way that surprised me a bit but was quite wonderful, genuinely jovial. My time with them was a welcome reminder of why I do what I do, why I choose to do it here, and why that remains the right decision on an ongoing basis. It refreshed and rejuvenated my love for this place and for the people with whom I have the pleasure to ski, work, play, shoot the breeze, and eat slices of pizza the size of our faces in mountain lodges. And when we ski together this coming winter, I will fall in love with skiing all over again, all day every day. I hope the same can be said of this wonderful family and of all the other people with whom I ski, guests and staff: that they will love it as much as I do, and that their love for skiing will be replenished and grow all the time as we evolve as skiers together. That’s the goal, it’s the end of the analysis, and it’s still really the only answer that matters.

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Fancy New Lightbulbs

 

The Roaring Fork River in Basalt, CO
How many Aspen locals does it take to change a lightbulb? Seven. One to change the lightbulb and six to say “It’s just not as special as the old lightbulb.”

Recently, I caught myself explaining the location of a new café in downtown Aspen in reference to the business it is replacing. “It’s on the corner where the blahblah was.” My parents visited me here a couple of weeks ago and stayed at the place “that used to be the yuttah-yuttah”. I’ve concluded that this is the defining characteristic of someone who qualifies as a “local” here – as though their mental map has several-inches-thick liquid paper on every business name, one layer for each change over time. The classic Aspen local’s response to this idea is “Well, that’s Aspen for you,” with an air of resignation about the special nature of this place. Except that I’m pretty sure that I’ve felt this before. Hmmm …

When I was a kid, my family used to pile into the station wagon, drive a billion hours to Cape Cod, and take the world’s coolest ferry to decamp into a rustic cottage on Nantucket that was a nice stroll for my scrawny little legs from the legendary ice cream joint on Main Street in town. I loved it then and now. I remember the island having an always-relaxed pace, everyone being friendly, and my parents not worrying about whether we’d be safe walking or biking to town or to the beach or just around the neighborhood. Doing all of the above while barefoot was marvelous.

I do have one very particular and very distinct memory about Nantucket that’s been on my mind lately. We would occasionally head to a beach on the other, ocean-facing side of the island for the day where the body-surfing was better, there were a few more people, and the previously sleepy little airport was nearby. I can see clearly in my mind’s eye the sight of a big jet operated by New York Air flying low overhead, landing gear down, about to off-load a hoard of city folk onto the bucolic island we so adored. My visceral response definitely was not ‘there goes the neighborhood’. My response, clear to me to this day, was to wonder whether we were part of the problem, whether we had merely been the advance guard of the coming invasion. First came the nice family from Upstate New York who fit in and appreciated putting on blue blazers for that special dinner in the White Elephant and the next thing you know The Sweet Shop was replacing bottomless cups of Bundt-brewed coffee with GMOfree-oatmilk-onesplenda-tumeric-chai-lattechinos and soy-based vegan cheese. And traffic; lots and lots of traffic. We definitely talked about this as a family and I recall that our conclusion was that our having been there before the onslaught didn’t mean we were entitled to begrudge it, even if we preferred Nantucket the way it had been.

I’ve lived and worked in the Mad River Valley in Vermont where New Jersey natives complained to me about the influx of new people ruining their preferred vibe. I’ve had third generation owners of old holiday homes in Wanaka complain about the snobs from Auckland buying up new homes in ritzy, expansive sub developments before going back to Christchurch or Wellington for their office work week. And so it all feels familiar when someone who came to Aspen as a ski bum after college in the 1980’s complains about all the people in town.

Please don’t misunderstand me: I am not saying that all development is good or that unbridled growth is a fait accompli. I do believe that there are deep-seeded, very serious issues to confront about the future of these sought-after places and worrisome concerns about what those problems tell us about our society. I do not believe that vegan cheese is a sign of the demise of Western civilization (although it may be). I just think that a little perspective is vital to the important discussions about the future.

The reasons people gravitate to these places are still right in front of our noses and a joy for everyone who arrives on our shores. As long as it stays that way, we can focus on how to keep the “welcome” sign on the door. And now, I’ll stroll in the sunshine to my favorite downtown Basalt café for a slightly too expensive but delicious al fresco breakfast burrito without worrying about my place in the arc of this town’s history. It’s not The Sweet Shop on Nantucket, but it most certainly will do the trick. Besides, those new light-bulbs are a big step forward.

Saturday, April 15, 2023

Changing The World, One Step at a Time

The team I coach, The Deviantes, training hard at Aspen Mountain.

Recently in Levi, Finland, representatives of national snow sports instructors’ associations from around the world gathered for Interski 2023, the quadrennial congress of our profession. Among the most widely anticipated and best received presentations at Interski was the keynote address by the USA’s Ann Schorling. A member of the Professional Ski Instructors of America National Alpine Team, Ms. Schorling’s address was “Increasing Gender Equity in Snowsports Instruction”. The theme for this year’s Interski was ‘the guest experience’, and a major theme of the keynote address was gender inclusivity as an essential component of the guest experience. Here’s a link to this outstanding presentation: Gender Equity in Snowsports Instruction - Keynote Address at Interski 2023 - YouTube.

It should be no surprise to learn that the lack of gender equality and inclusivity generally in the snow sports industry is real and vexing. It also should be no surprise that organizational cultures throughout the industry often resist and even work against change, despite our leaders’ best efforts. The question for us, for boots on the snow professionals, is what each of us can do to facilitate change, to make our sports more welcoming and inclusive to all? I do not possess some grand plan or revolutionary view to make inclusion efforts easier and more successful. I can speak, however, to what I do, what actions I take.

I’ve been thinking about this a great deal this spring, wondering whether I am doing enough. Anecdotally, it’s brought to mind a old line that a friend and I used to make when we were working together to get her ready for her instructor certification exams. When asked what we were working on so intensely, our response was that we were training for world domination. Her name is Heidi, and thinking of that time together really brings a smile to my face. And I do think we achieved it (especially if you ask us).

I’d hired Heidi as an instructor for the staff at Treble Cone in Wanaka, New Zealand outside the usual early-season process for bringing new staff on board. She was spending significant time and money on the expensive and elaborate instructor training courses that operate at the resorts down there, and her part-time teaching for us served to blunt the large financial burden of her courses. We’d gotten to know each other well on a professional level and I had been impressed by her work. Heidi was having difficulties achieving the highest level of instructor certification despite what I thought were her obvious and prodigious talents as a skier and coach.

On slower days and on our occasional days off, this young pro and I would quietly head out on the hill and work through pieces of the teaching and skiing puzzles, just the two of us. Doing so did call attention to us and, in that particularly small fish-bowl of a place, people frequently asked what we were doing: why, world domination of course. Towards the end of that season, Heidi aced her exams and subsequently went on to achieve great heights in our profession. To this day, she is one of my favorite ski pros on the planet. We became close friends and she is a part of that amazing community of people I miss since I’ve been away from New Zealand.

I cannot and will not take credit for Heidi’s success. I can claim to have had the ability to listen to and understand who she is as an athlete and a person in a way that allowed us to find a path forward for her, on her own terms. Thinking about our time together lately has highlighted the distinctions between my idealized big picture view of the ski industry and the reality of it on the ground, and Ann Schorling’s presentation put that distinction into sharp relief.

Heidi and I did not construct a strategy for her success on the basis of her gender. We concocted and executed our strategy for her out of mutual respect  and clear communitcation based on who she is, what she needed, how to best enable her success on her own terms as the person she is. Gender had nothing to do with it other than generating a result that provided all of us with an industry leader who earned her success on the merits after a lot of hard work, and whose presence and example can and does inspire young women (and their male counterparts) to pursue their own ambitions through conscientious hard work.

The point is not that my work with Heidi is a lesson for gender-based focus. It is that it is a lesson in person-based focus. At the core of the American Teaching System for snow sports is a student-centered teaching model. The intent therefore is to meet all our guests and the pros who we train to teach them as they are – gender, race, ethnicity, religion, age, life experience, how they feel that day when we meet them, what their economic status may be ... each as they are. When we do this well, learning to ski or snowboard and improving at our sports in the hands of an exceptional professional instructor can be a remarkably empowering experience, for adults and for kids.

Unfortunately, our work to achieve real and meaningful buy-in to our student-centered method in our profession remains a work in progress. Critically, I believe that achieving real inclusiveness in snow sports can be a direct outgrowth of that keystone belief of the American Teaching System. We just need to keep our eyes on the horizon while working with each guest, every day, to enable them to achieve success on their terms. When our instructing staffs can honestly turn the lens on themselves and know with confidence they are making progress towards that end, we all win. When that does happen, our profession and our professional organizations will have made a great deal of progress towards re-affirming my own belief in the power of sport. Until that time, though we can take pride in the changes we've made there is yet a lot of work to be done.

Thursday, November 24, 2022

The Drag Coefficient of Chocolate

A view of Snowmass on Thanksgiving Day.

All over the Northeastern United States, in seemingly every ski resort in the Northeastern United States, there is a cultural phenomenon so ubiquitous that it is very easy to give it short shrift and to assume that it’s been around since the Mayflower dropped anchor.

Go ahead, ski around the busier parts of your preferred ski resort on any day when there are large groups of children in race programs swarming around like flocks of starlings in matching jackets while their coaches try their best to keep them reasonably safe and on target. Watch carefully. There will be one small, very particular place where the madness stops, like the calm in the eye of a storm. You will most certainly smell the spot before you see it, and then you will understand the root cause of the big pause in all the action. Yes, I’m talking about the Waffle Cabin.

Vermont purists may bristle at the idea of chocolate-covered waffles having overtaken real maple syrup as the covering of choice for these warm, gooey, saccharine-sweet treats, but there is no denying the preference being exercised. Perhaps “laced” with chocolate is a better description than “covered” or “slathered” given the effects the waffles have on their willing victims. Either way, it's a thing, and it's important.

If you happen to be near the start or finish line of the course where these programs compete on race day, NASTAR or otherwise, you’ll notice the stunning amount of chocolate smeared on the faces of the kids. To be clear, their faces are covered in chocolate because, in defiance rational explanation and the laws of physics, the waffles are larger than the faces of the typical race kid. It can look as though the coaching staff took a big mop dipped in molten goodness and ran down the line of children getting all of their faces in one long swipe to make sure they all got their share. There is nothing quite like the site of a bunch of 7-year-olds in matching oversized jackets or oddly baggy speed suits with chocolate all over their faces. It’s hilarious.

The question I have about waffles and their undeniable place among young, aspiring American ski racers is whether it would be possible to identify, for purposes of modern science, the effect they have on the performance and development of the athletes. If I somehow were able to get press credentials to the FIS World Cup races being held at Killington this weekend and somehow were able to ask questions of the several exceptional American athletes who spent at least some of their formative ski years in the New York or New England, I’d pose the following questions:

(1)    What role do you feel was played by the chocolate-covered waffles on race day as a kid in your ascendancy to the world stage?

(2)    Do you still include chocolate-covered waffles in your race-day preparations?

(3)    Do you think that the quality and prevalence of the chocolate in the Alps is a competitive advantage or disadvantage for European ski racers?

(4)    Mikaela, do you have to make accommodations for chocolate-covered waffles in your sponsorship negotiations with Barilla?

(5)    Paula, do you find a significant difference between the waffles in Minnesota and those in Vermont and how do you accommodate for that difference in your preparation?

(6)    Lastly, and most importantly, do your ski service techs secretly smear chocolate on your face or on your skis to make you go faster?

Like so many Vermonters who are current and former ski racers, I am immensely proud of the way in which the people of Vermont host the World Cup. I absolutely adore the way in which the athletes from all over the globe and from here in the US feel the warmth of the place and its people. Especially now that I am away in Colorado when Killington hosts the races, I get pretty misty when I see the enormous crowds cheering loudly for every single athlete and then get even louder for the Americans. It’s a wonderful reminder of why ski racing in Vermont and in the Northeast generally does have a very special place in skiing in a way that draws out the reasons we all love it so much, allowing it to shine through for the world to see.

I do not know if the television coverage of the HERoic Killington Cup presented by Stifel will allow me to scan the faces of the thousands of kids screaming their lungs out in the base area for the telltale presence of chocolate. I do not know if I’ll be able to tell whether the kids with more chocolate on their faces will scream louder for their heroes. I do know, however, that I will watch the Killington races with great pride and real excitement, for my sport, for the athletes, for my home, and for the wonderful people who make it such an extraordinary event. And, on this Thanksgiving I will be truly thankful for all the many wonderful kids whom I've coached and for their families.

Happy Thanksgiving!