Inversion

Up is down. Right is left. Young is old. Fast is slow. Steep is flat. Deer are raised in paddocks. Driving is on the left and steering wheels are on the right. 'Tomato sauce' is used on french fries, which are called chips anyway. We look north to the sun. 'E' is pronounced like 'i' and 'i' is pronounced like 'e'. Summer is winter. And, for the last several days, the sky has been below us and looks like the ocean, the weather on the top of the mountain has been warm and sunny while town has been gray and gloomy, and the inmates are running the asylum.

At Treble Cone and in Wanaka, we've been "stuck" in a weather pattern known as an inversion for several days. Technically, an inversion occurs when warm air rises and sits above a layer of cold air, meaning that it's warmer at higher elevations. Often, the air layers are separated by a dense layer of clouds. What this means for us is that in town it's been very gray and very cloudy with not a hint of blue sky. In the mornings when we collect the staff in our vans and make the drive to Treble Cone, twenty minutes from town and another twenty minutes up our rather crazy access road that winds its way up the mountain, we're in the dark until the point on the road when we rise above the clouds. At this time of year, with the days as short as they are, it means that we rise above the clouds just as the sun rises above the horizon. It's amazingly dramatic, incredibly beautiful, and frequently stops me in my tracks. Fittingly, given that it was the first day of a new ski season, today we departed as the sun dropped below the clouds in perfect symmetry.

We've opened with better conditions that we have in decades, so regardless of whether the moon is upside down in the sky or not, it's already a great winter and it's only just begun.

Rocket Surgery

Treble Cone is an industry-leading mountain resort here in the Southern Hemisphere, there’s no doubt about it. We are justly proud of the quality of the services we provide to all of our guests – whether in the café, the car park, the lift lines, or in lessons with our award-winning Snow Sports School, and that doesn’t even take into account the incredible terrain we have at our disposal. One of the more challenging aspects of working here, however, is that we are only open for about four months of the year. Combine that short season with the fact that the overwhelming majority of the resort staff comes from overseas, and it means that at this time of year, in the weeks before we open to the public for skiing and riding, there is an awful lot of work to be done. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that we get fully up to speed from a standing start in a matter of just a few weeks. The metaphor that I’ve been kicking around is that it’s like getting a Ferrari ready for Le Mans after it’s been sitting on blocks in the front yard over a Vermont winter.

There are many, many details that we need to get right in order to set our Snow Sports School in motion in a way that meets our expectations for excellence. Policies have to be articulated and the processes of scheduling, selling, setting up, organizing and executing ski and snowboard lessons have to be ironed out in ways that are consistent with our ethos of guest service. Schedules and systems need to be established, uniforms issued, passes provided, and the staff must be trained and joined together into a cohesive team of professionals. It’s a bit of a mad rush, but it is a forced reevaluation of our priorities and our philosophy which in the end is rewarding to those of us responsible for setting the tone and running the business.

At the end of the day, as I always like to point out, our jobs are about sharing our mountain, our passion, and our sports with all comers. It may not always be easy but, as an Italian colleague of mine in Vermont so aptly pointed out to me a few years ago, “it’s not rocket surgery”. Our lifties, baristas, patrollers, ticket sellers, parking attendants, groomers, snowmakers and, yes, instructors are all pros, we’re all anxious, and we’re all excited. Treble Cone has more pre-opening snow than we’ve had in several years, and it is, without qualification, going to be a great season.

Back In Time for Dinner

Ah yes, the lazy days of summer. For most of us in the adult world, those days are gone completely. Unfortunately, for most children, those days are gone completely as well. Unstructured outdoor playtime was the hallmark of summer, though not limited only to summer, and was when I really explored the world outside, made stuff up, built forts in the woods and hung out in them, developed strategies to contend with mosquitoes, sadistically plotted the mass destruction of the tent caterpillars that carpeted the street I lived on, and played soccer in the neighborhood with my friends until it was either too dark or one of our parents finally had had enough of our shenanigans. I didn't need a day planner and none of us even knew what a cellphone was. If our parents wanted to reach us, they had to yell very loudly, call someone else's house, or send out a search party. Nobody ever worried whether we were being properly supervised and we never were. Amazingly, as kids, as long as we were outside and it was summer, we were never bored even if we had nothing in particular to do. How cool was that!

As a ski instructor, I am a very big proponent of unstructured outdoor play time. Yes, when I am conducting all-day lessons for kids we do learn a bunch and I do use certain activities for their technical merit and with specific goals. But, as I often tell my students, it definitely is not "school". It is not unusual for parents to express dismay that their children were able to pay attention in their "class" for an entire day. What those parents fail to realize, and what I take great joy in explaining to them, is that there is no one thing to which their kids need to pay attention constantly throughout the day. The amount of sensory input and the variety and quantity of stimulus is incredible and, of yeah, it's a ton of fun, it's active and it's thought provoking. It's just like summer, only it's winter. Our skiing becomes a vehicle for all manner of exploration and, if I'm doing my job right, the day becomes much more than a mere ski lesson - for me and for the kids. Oh, and by the way, it's also true for adults, but don't tell my adult students that.

As a proponent of unstructured outdoor play time, it is at the core of my beliefs about childhood development that over-planned, over-structured, antiseptic, hyper-scrubbed, danger-free childhoods are actually bad for kids in ways physical, psychological and sociological, and that they are also bad for our society as a whole. Wait a minute, you may say, isn't this just about ski lessons? You're darn right it's about lessons, but it most certainly is not about skiing. We're not all winners, we're not likely to make the Olympics, there is sometimes scary stuff out there, falling hurts, skiing in the woods is dangerous, sub-zero weather stinks, rain is wet and nasty, and icy bumps are really a challenge. Sweet!

There are many facets to this way of thinking and many tangents I can explore which really get me up on my soapbox. Suffice it to say that there is a subtle and very interesting sociological movement afoot about child-rearing in the modern hyper-scheduled world. Thankfully, you don't have to take the word of a ski instructor who doesn't have his own children on this subject. In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, Lisa Belkin wrote a good piece which highlights some of the evolution in parenting over recent decades from this perspective ("Let the Kid Be", by Lisa Belkin, The New York Times Magazine, May 31, 2009, p. 19). Another good work on the subject that really got me thinking about my role as the pied piper of unstructured outdoor play time for kids (and adults) is Richard Louv's book Last Child Left in the Woods (Algonquin Books, 2005).

Regardless, in good times and bad, good weather and bad, summer, winter, morning, noon and night, the resilience and creativity of children never ceases to amaze me. It's a good lesson for all of us. So, go outside and don't come back until it's time for dinner. And make sure your little sister gets to play.