This afternoon was a pretty typical one for me on a weekend in
between my New Zealand season at Cardrona and my New England season once
we’re skiing at Sugarbush. We call it stick season here for a reason - all of the
foliage for which Vermont is justly famous sits on the forest floor and the
hillsides are barren until the arrival of winter’s snow, hopefully just a
short time away. On these weekends, I often walk up to the
summit of the mountain behind my home in Ludlow. I walk along Mountain Road, an
actual road in summer and a ski trail in winter that winds its way around the
peak, making for a gentle but still lengthy jaunt. Getting to the road from my
house requires some bush-whacking, which today meant being shin deep in leaves.
Being "up to my shins in it" brought to mind some peculiar bits of nomenclature that are particular to those
of us committed to a life in the mountains.
Outside the ski industry, being “in deep” doesn’t
necessarily have a positive connotation. Before getting “in deep”, we warily “dip
a toe in the water” before “wading in”. “I’ve had it up to my neck”, "I’m up to
my waist in …”, and being “over your head” are definitely not flattering states
of affairs. You get the picture. I’ll rely on linguists and sociologists to
analyze why it is that depth became such a bad thing. A bad thing,
that is, unless, of course, you’re a skier or snowboarder.
For skiers and snowboarders, anything “boot-top deep” is
considered excellent. We use classic East Coast sarcasm to describe small
storms as leaving us “edge-deep” or “sidewall deep” in powder. Anything deeper than our
boot-tops is truly exceptional. “Knee Deep” works because the alliteration matches the poetry of the conditions. The feeling of being “up to our guts
in it” simply defies description. Being “over your head” is beyond our
capacity to dream, but for the presence of YouTube
videos that show us what it’s like to actually be over your head in powder (cue the Hokkaido ski videos). I have skied
over my head in powder and I just can’t talk about it right now. Hold on, I
need a minute to collect myself.
The other, more colorful language that is an essential part
of the skiing and snowboarding lexicon but that fails to conform to
conventional usage has to do with flu symptoms, bodily functions, and the
severity of storms. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have skied all day in the middle of a big storm and to have to explain to someone new to
the sport that the fact that it was “absolutely puking” out there is a good thing. “Absolutely puking” is a notch up (in severity,
depth and our excitement) from “totally dumping”. Once in a while, we
experience storms that are so strong that we describe them as “shiXting on us”,
meaning that it was so severe that we couldn’t even ski or ride. That’s “shiXting”,
as distinct from “dumping”. “Pissing” is reserved for severe liquid precipitation
(I refrain from using the “r” word whenever possible). Oddly enough, “shiXting”
also can be used to describe liquid precip that is overwhelmingly drenching. I
hope this isn’t offensive, but that’s precisely my point. Around the world, in
dozens of languages, in remote mountain huts, tiny alpine villages, and
run-down much-loved ski town bars, devoted skiers and snowboarders express how
much they can’t wait for it to absolutely puke on us this winter, and that’s
not a reference to the results of too much stick season tequila.
Today, I was up to my shins in leaves. Tomorrow, Monday, I’ll
be up to my neck in the pre-season work of getting the Sugarbush Ski & Ride
School ready for another winter. We all hope that soon we’ll be up to our
gills, choking on it, and happy as could possibly be as a result. With any luck, this winter will be "totally sick".
