Ease of Green

Spring is almost at full strength here in New England. The hard wood trees have yet to reach their complete cover of deeper, darker hues, but there are buds everywhere in the fields and on the forest floor. The hillsides at this time of year in New England have a pale, almost yellowish green aura about them, well-matched by the pale, almost yellowish green of the pollen which is wreaking havoc with my eyes and nose. Despite that, the sounds and smells of Spring, almost more than the sights of it, are what really brings me joy after a long winter. I'll take the pollen, the occasional drenching rains and the emergent bugs along with it all because, hey, after all, it's not easy being green.

Boundaries & Borders

This week, like most during my “shoulder season” in between winters, I’ve spent a lot of time riding my road bike. My much beloved bicycle was manufactured in Spain (the Basque country, actually, if you ask the good folks who made it). I ride on tires made from South American rubber by a Dutch company, on wheels made in France, using a drive train made in Japan, with handlebars and stem made in Italy, and with several other bits and pieces from here in the United States and elsewhere. On a good day, when I have fresh legs, the right combination of food and drink in me, the right amount of sleep, and the right frame of mind, this model U.N. of components and pieces works together in perfect sync, translating my effort to the Vermont tarmac smoothly in a way that allows me to work my body, clear my head, and enjoy the beautiful countryside. On a good day, the origins of the various components fade away with the stresses of everyday life. Don’t worry, I’m not about to break out into song here but I do have a point to make.

In the coming weeks I’ll be traveling overseas a bit, passport in hand. When I arrive at JFK airport in New York City for my flights, I’ll be with the largest number of people I’ve been amongst in several months, converging there from all over the globe. It’ll be like a human version of the international flow of commerce. Having not had a sniffle all Spring apart from some hay fever, and having survived the long winter without having gotten sick at all, I now am a little concerned about the current swine flu scare. I’m not worried about actually contracting swine flu, but I am a little nervous about the perception of illness. What if I forget to take Claritin and display cold symptoms on the flight? Will we be forced to land in Nova Scotia and be quarantined until after the minimum incubation period has passed? Should I wear a surgical mask to protect myself from the rest of the traveling throngs? I have places to go and people to see, and I have no interest in being a news story or a case study. Should I be pounding some sort of cocktail of Magnesium and Zinc? Gosh, the folks reading the “news” on TV certainly make it seem as though I should consult with the Center for Disease Control before going anywhere or doing anything.

Enough already. No, I’m not going to worry about it. No, I’m not going to do anything or take anything out of the ordinary to protect myself. No, I do not have swine flu and, odds are, definitely will not catch it. My lifestyle, moving back and forth between winters in the U.S. and New Zealand, spending my time with guests from all over the world and a largely itinerant collection of staff, puts me four-square in the modern realm of people taking advantage of the blurred lines of demarcation between countries, economies, languages, and cultures. Heck, getting ready for the approaching season at Treble Cone in New Zealand, I’ve had several conference calls recently with our Austrian director, who has been in California, about hiring staff from more countries than I have fingers, all conducted in English for free using an internet phone service. Swine flu is the least of my concerns.

At the end of the day, I rely on all the various, minute facets of this cross-border existence to work seamlessly together in order to do my job, enjoy my time, and live my life. On a bad day, I may feel every cog in the chain as I work to do what I need to do. On a good day, I won’t be aware of the chain at all, and the components will free me to look to the horizon and enjoy my time on the road.

Mud Season Be Damned

As in any community that depends on tourism and second home ownership as major components of the local economy, the building trades in Ludlow are very active and employ an awful large number of the residents, even in a down economy. Now that the winter is over and our resort has closed, the sounds of hammers and saws resonate throughout the woods all over town, all day, every day. There is a “but” coming here, and the “but” is mud season.

Mud season is not a joke, it is not merely some folksy Vermont reference to April showers, and it is not a relic of a gentler time relegated to Norman Rockwell prints or the conversations of old-timers in the village cafes. Mud season is real and we’re in the thick of it, literally. With so many of the roads up in the hills around town remaining unpaved, they can get pretty nasty when the snow melts – worse so after a particularly snowy winter like the one just passed. Ruts that can run up to my car’s wheel wells, pot holes big enough to curl up in and take a nap, and mud that splatters everything in sight and then coats everything with a thick layer of dust when it’s warm and dry are the norm this during time of year. It’s a good time to head for more temperate climes.

The “but” problem for the building trades is that during mud season, the town officially closes many of the dirt roads to commercial traffic over a certain weight. What this means is that if you’re in the middle of a building project and you haven’t had the foundation poured or you haven’t had your lumber delivered before the roads close, you are likely to spend your time sitting and twiddling your thumbs until things dry out at the end of April or early May. Projects ill-timed to accommodate for mud season can really cause headaches for the unprepared builder. There is one set of notable exceptions. Let’s call them “Nature’s Carpenters”, at the risk of being too cute. I’m talking about beavers, lots of them. And they definitely have been busy.

I took the photos below yesterday, April 15th, alongside Route 100 between Plymouth and Bridgewater, Vermont. The valley floor there is narrow in spots with lots of running water that feeds the many lakes with clean, clear runoff from the surrounding mountains. It’s the perfect spot for beavers to go to work, mud season be damned (pun intended). The conical shaped stumps are characteristic, and the sheer size of the dam and the volume of timber felled by the critters is remarkable but typical. In some of the photos here, look carefully and you’ll see the tooth marks in the stumps. I’m not certain whether dam building is a more effective way of catching fish than dropping a line or casting a fly (the methods preferred by biped carpenters), but it certainly is enough to leave me marveling at the beavers' handiwork.

Throwing Out the Book

Among the many subjects that ski and snowboard instructors study as part of our professional development, to say nothing about the certification process, is the nature and stages of childhood development – both physical and intellectual. Piaget’s Stages of Development, Maslow’s Pyramid, the CAP Model and other scientific theories form an important part of these studies and of our understanding of what we do and the people with whom we do it. It’s interesting stuff, if not a bit dry and occasionally as effective as an Ambien. On the ground in the day-to-day work of an instructor, there are more basic and obvious concepts that play a more immediate role. Simply put, there are some well-known truisms about teaching kids and about childhood development that we encounter frequently. On Saturday, I ran smack dab into one of these.

Girls generally develop certain fine motor skills earlier than boys. As instructors, it is widely accepted that girls who participate in certain specified activities - gymnastics, martial arts and dance in particular, more so than common sports - take to skiing and riding faster than their peers. While we hate to classify kids and try our best to assess each child on their on merits as athletes and students, sometimes we just can’t help ourselves when we find one of these rare children whose rapid progress through our sports can be bewildering to even the most seasoned teacher.

At Saturday morning’s group ski lesson line-up, I was assigned to teach a 12-year-old girl on her first ever morning on skis. A family friend had taken her up our Magic Carpet beginner’s lift for a few runs before the lesson started and informed me that the girl – we’ll refer to her as “RockStar” – had successfully made linked wedge turns down from the top of the carpet with virtually no instruction. Bear in mind that it is not uncommon for a beginner’s lesson to end with successful completion of a run from the top of the carpet with linked wedge turns. My first question of RockStar was, naturally, what other activities she likes to do, anticipating the gymno-taekwon-dance-alete response. I was not disappointed. The next noise was that of me tearing up the level 1 lesson plan and moving into the accelerated “when are the next Olympics” mode for RockStar.

RockStar and I had a ball skiing together for two hours that morning. We skied a ton, explored terrain and saw some views of the surrounding countryside rarely seen by novice skiers. By the end of the lesson, she was skiing parallel on some of our more challenging green trails, using her super short rental skis in what quickly became shin deep slush as the day warmed up to near 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Honestly, making slow parallel turns in shin deep slush is hard enough on the long, wide skis and perfectly fitted boots I was using, so RockStar’s rental equipment, perfect for a true beginner, quickly became a handicap which, amazingly, did not seem to hinder her progress much. You try skiing in slush on a pair of 120’s!

There are two things that I try hard to bear in mind when teaching kids like RockStar. The first is to get the heck out of the way – if kids like this are going to succeed, a lockstep, technical ski lesson with drills and exercises thinly veiled as kids games is the very last thing they need. The second is to be patient and not get overly ambitious or exuberant - RockStar may have been a rock star, but she was still a nervous kid experiencing a lot of new stuff in a strange environment with a strange and scary-looking man as her guide. A little tweak here and there, some fun, conversation on the lift about what we’re doing and how it relates to something with which they are familiar, checking out the view, giving a tour of the ski mountain (no, the half-pipe is not a “ditch”), and enjoying our time outside in the mountains is what they really need to do once they get rolling. That, some mileage and strident avoidance of the Siren-like smells coming from the Waffle Cabin, and we can successfully welcome great kids to our sport and prepare them for a lifetime of sliding on snow. The sky is the limit.

Roots Rock

Having been a collegiate ski racer, race coach, and ski professional here in New England, many of my colleagues frequently throughout the years have teased me for being from New York. Though New York has not been home for me in a very long time, I grew up in the Hudson Valley and, most obviously, my sports team loyalties fall squarely West of the line dividing the New England states from their neighbor.

For some reason, New Englanders seem to be oblivious to the immensity of New York State and its incredible diversity of landscape, economy, spoken English, and culture. There's so much more to it than New York City and the surrounding suburbs, and I have often felt the need to remind my friends of this fact. My favorite thing to do in this respect is to ask New Englanders "How many Winter Olympic Games have been held in New England exactly?" New York, of course, has had two.

For the uninitiated, the Adirondack Mountains in New York are immense, craggy peaks. The Adirondack Park is massive, encompassing many towns, a large population, and substantial industry based upon its numerous natural resources. For centuries, it has been an interesting study of the relationship between conservation and development, residents and tourists, and public and private interests on a scale that dwarfs that of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

I spent a few days this past week skiing at Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, site of the ski events from the 1980 and the 1932 Winter Olympics. Whiteface has the longest vertical drop of any ski area in the Eastern U.S., and has some pretty exceptional steeps. It's a great place to ski. Lake Placid itself is the original winter destination resort in the U.S. and is full of some wonderful things to see and do, going well beyond the Olympic site activities (it was the home of the recently completed 2009 Bobsled World Championships).

Regrettably, I was too busy while skiing to tend to any tourist activities or to take many photos of the area. The few posted here are, literally and figuratively, the simplest of snapshots of the area. I hope to return to Lake Placid in warmer weather, on foot (not clad in ski boots), and slow down long enough to really experience all of it. In the meantime, it was enough to ski elsewhere, in big mountains, and be reminded that deep down in my being, I am a New Yorker. Knickerbockers, Rangers, Giants, Cosmos, and yes, proudly, the Yankees.

The Joys of Spring

Sometimes, as the expression goes, Spring comes roaring in like a lion. Sometimes it comes in like a lamb. Apparently this year it's neither. This year, Spring is coming in like an early-season New England beach-goer, dipping one toe in the water at a time, pulling it out, then trying it again, hoping the water will somehow get warmer.

I took the photo on the left at about 7:15AM on Tuesday, March 3rd. I took the photo on the right at about the same time on Thursday, March 5th. Yes, the photos are of the same thermometer and yes, it was located in the same spot when I took both photos. Since the time of the second photo, the weather has continued its roller-coaster though it has remained generally warmer. Naturally, we received about seven inches of snow during the day yesterday, it was sunny and in the mid-30's Fahrenheit today, it's going to rain a bit tomorrow, and we're expecting a big freeze-up tomorrow night. Are you following this?

Thankfully, as has been widely reported, Okemo has already surpassed last year's snow accumulation total so the skiing and riding continues to be outstanding - bearing in mind that last year we had a banner season by any measure. March is always the snowiest month of the year here in Vermont, so we should enjoy great conditions for some time to come. The questions to ask, therefore, are at what point Mother Nature will decide to go beyond merely dipping a toe in the warmer weather and how fast will we become immersed fully in the joys of Spring?

When It Rains ...

The past ten days have been remarkable. We had two very large snow storms – one in the heart of Presidents Week – which dumped some incredibly light, dry snow on our mountain. The second storm, which hit us hard for the entire day on Sunday, February 22nd and into the early morning hours of the 23rd, made for the best single day of skiing I’ve had in the Eastern U.S. in a very, very long time. Seriously. Last Monday was definitely “pinch me” time, and I was fortunate to be able to spend the day teaming up with some great instructors to ski with a family that are some of my favorite guests. We giggled like school kids all day, had some great crashes in deep powder up to our knees, skied the double diamond woods and bumps in good form, and got to see some terrific children make a lot of progress while grinning from ear to ear.

That was last weekend. This weekend was a different story.

On Thursday, the weather warmed to above freezing. On Friday, the heavens opened and it poured rain on us. Late Friday night, everything froze solid. On Saturday, I’m fairly certain that Okemo set a world record for the largest vertical drop of any ice skating rink in the world. It was scary out there, as in granite countertops scary. Overnight Saturday and into this morning, Sunday, our snowmaking and grooming crews showed why they are the best on the planet, and today our guests had reasonably good conditions on a pretty nice day, all things considered.

Naturally, there’s another big storm on the way tomorrow. There’s nothing like “dust on crust” to keep us honest on the hill. What will come our way after that is anyone’s guess, but it is Vermont and March tends to be our snowiest month, so we’ll just have to take it one day at a time. After all, when it rains, it freezes.