The Bridge and Roundabout Crowd

Even the aspen trees were ready for winter last week. Almost.

I caught up with some close friends yesterday from my hometown in Vermont. Our plan to meet for lunch happened to coincide with the first big winter storm of the season. No biggie. The roads were fine and getting to catch up, hear about their recent adventures, and generally enjoy their company was terrific in every way. Lunch was yummy, we split a disconcertingly sugary desert, forestalled the inevitable diabetic shock with a nice stroll in the cold air along the river, browsed in a great local bookstore, and then parted ways certain that we’d see each other again soon. The hour and a quarter drive home was easy and provided some great views of the new snowfall in Glenwood Canyon. Wait, what? An hour and a quarter drive, you say? Insert sound of the needle skipping across the record here.

Yes, I met friends for lunch in a place that was an hour and fifteen minutes from where I live. It’s about halfway between my house and theirs and a great spot to spend the afternoon. No, none of us thought that was weird and, no, it was not unusual. Not for Vermonters, anyway.

In Vermont, when friends invite you over for dinner it’s common for that to mean a trip that takes an hour to the next town over, along roads that never ever go in a straight line, where conditions are frequently very dicey, cell service is inconsistent and totally unreliable, and we love it. I can immediately think of a few people whose dinner tables are among my favorite places on the planet (you know who you are, Ali & Chris) and whose homes are close as the crow flies but can be an hour away in good weather, and that’s using the river road shortcut. It calms the mind, feeds the soul, and blessedly slows down this hectic world for the evening. It’s wonderful.

In stark contrast, among some Aspen locals there is a very particular way of looking at distances and the effort of traveling across them here in the Roaring Fork Valley. In winter, when Independence Pass is closed to vehicles, the City of Aspen is the end of the road, literally. Colorado Highway 82 is the major thoroughfare into Aspen and, critically, just as it enters the city there is a roundabout. The best way to think of that roundabout is that it functions like a cork – it bottles everything and everyone Aspen inside the box canyon and backs-up traffic of everyone and everything trying to get into the city.

What yesterday’s little trip brought to mind about Aspen is the effect that the roundabout has on the mindset of the people there. Notable numbers of Aspen residents find having to travel past the roundabout to be a serious pain in the derrière, even a distasteful thing to have to do. This particular sociological phenomenon, to be clear, cracks me up. It cracks me up so much that I willingly have ended the prior sentence with a preposition. It reminds me, in a way, of native Manhattanites who smugly refer to the people who travel onto the island as “the bridge and tunnel crowd”. Please note that I say “smug” and not “snobby”: it’s a fuzzy distinction but a critical one because the smugness is applied regardless of socio-economic status.

One entertaining, specific example of this is my favorite restaurant in Aspen. It’s a North African bistro with exceptional, interesting food from an award-winning local chef, with great service in a cozy environment. However, because the bistro is ever so slightly past the roundabout, many self-styled foodies can’t be bothered to try it and prefer to spend their time at the ludicrously expensive name-brand extravaganzas in town whose food is, well, less good. You’d think it was as though you’d recommended a restaurant in Newark to someone from the Upper West Side, only it’s about five minutes away from the Aspen Epicenter. They’re missing out.

Buttermilk and Snowmass are two of the four mountains in our resort. Both are past the roundabout and so are the recipient of that same smugness despite their considerable value to skiers and riders. Aspen Highlands is actually level with the roundabout, not technically past it, so it somehow squeaks under the umbrella of being ‘in town’ despite its historic and proud quirkiness. Highlands is like the far frontier, the wild west of ‘in town’. Skiing at Highlands for residents of downtown Aspen would be like someone from the Upper West Side going all the way off the grid to Greenwich Village if the Village was five blocks away.

I live in Basalt. It’s about 20 minutes from downtown Aspen without traffic (notably, describing 82 as being without traffic is like describing a Vermont drive as being in good weather). In Basalt we have our own authentic main street with shops and nice restaurants; we have great parks, exceptional hiking, two rivers converging right in downtown; and those of us who live here are quite happy being “down valley” and past the roundabout. Basaltines, as we call ourselves (thank you, Rob), happily go to Carbondale with friends, do our shopping in Willits, and run errands in Glenwood Springs (“Glen-Vegas”). Maybe that makes us a tiny bit more like Vermonters and maybe, just maybe, that’s why I like being here.

Entertainment aside, most Aspen residents quite happily include Snowmass, Basalt, and the rest of the Roaring Fork Valley in their orbit without hesitation. I like Aspen and the wider valley a lot. I am glad to be here, very glad to work at Aspen Snowmass, and am very much looking forward to my first full-time non-pandemic winter season here. Still, I will happily make the drive to Edwards, Dillon, or wherever my friends are to share a good meal and hear their stories. After all, though the highways are straight and wide and the winter weather is pretty benign here, their company makes this place more like home wherever we happen to be. Thank you, Todd & Erin, for a great afternoon. I’ll look forward to the next one!

Lobster Orthodoxy

Those who know ... a proper lobster roll this past weekend

Not far from where my parents live is a small family-owned farm stand, operated by the same family and selling produce from their family farm for almost 200 years. Their salt box building is from the 1750’s, was one of the first post-offices in the United States of America, and it is about a half-mile from where the Pilgrims came ashore and settled in 1620. The people at Bramhall’s Country Store know what they are doing.

While it is true that the Maine seacoast is ground zero for lobster in the same way that Vermont is the epicenter of all things maple and the Lower East Side is the Promised Land for deli, cured salmon, decent knishes and so much more … ooph, sorry, focus … Bramhall’s provides important and valuable lessons about one incredibly vital New England food item. I’m talking about lobster rolls.

In my orthodox epicurean world view, the lobster rolls at Bramhall’s are as important for what they do not have as what they do have. No, it is not a “lobster roll sandwich”. No, it most definitely is not “lobster salad”. No, there is absolutely no mayonnaise involved. Not ever. Never. What you do to their lobster rolls if you decide to take them home is totally up to you: go ahead, put some curry powder or aioli on it, some chives, or maybe just a sprinkle of sea salt; just don’t tell me about it. Like all proper lobster rolls, Bramhall's includes the following: a buttered, toasted, top-split hot dog bun; and a huge pile of fresh coarsely chopped lobster from a happy creature recently pulled from the saltwater tanks right outside and boiled alive and whole. Period. Serve it with quality potato chips because, well, it is New England. Although driving there and taking the lobster roll home is convenient, sitting at a picnic table underneath the enormous ancient oak trees that cast their cooling shadows over the farm stand on a hot summer day while listening to the symphony of the birds and bees in the branches above is like hearing Handel live in a cathedral instead of using your ear buds to listen while in a spin class at your local gym. The “jumbo” version of Bramhall’s lobster roll includes, wait for it, half a pound of lobster.

And another thing … in all of the seasons I’ve spent in New Zealand and over the last few years while I’ve been in Colorado, one of the things I’ve missed the most about home is the fresh corn in late summer and early fall. I know people here in Colorado are proud of the corn from Paonia, but it’s just not the same and while I applaud their pride I do believe that they don’t know any better. The corn from my home village in the Housatonic Valley is my favorite, of course, but innumerable nooks and crannies in rural New England and Upstate New York produce corn with a complexity that is unspeakably delicious. Maple syrup comes out of trees and is simply boiled down to its essence to be insanely good; New England lobsters come out of the sea and are boiled until the shells are bright red and the flesh is outrageously yummy, and the same is true of fresh, local corn. When I rocked up to Bramhall’s recently to dive face first into a lobster roll, one of their young staff had just started unloading a bushel of corn that had been picked that morning. I bought six of them. Good Lord.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. I do focus some of my Yankee homesickness on the food here in Colorado and how I feel about it. Yes, yes, the very idea that there is yellow colored cheddar in the supermarkets makes me want to cry almost as much as the maple flavored corn syrup does. Who would do that to their cheddar? Do they dye their cows yellow too? Come on people! An uncomfortable reality of my life here is that good food and good restaurants are almost exclusively outrageously expensive. Together with the fact that dinner parties where we all get together and cook for each other are not a regular feature of life here in the way that they are among my friends in Vermont or in Wanaka, New Zealand and it makes great meals rarer than they should be.

I do have some friends here that know how to cook and like to sit, have a chat, help each other out in the kitchen, and enjoy each other’s company, and those evenings are worth their weight in gold. I recently had an evening with a terrific group of ex-pat Vermonters where we waxed nostalgic for our home town while complaining about yellow cheddar and other oddities in the midst of enjoying a truly wonderful meal cooked all day by one of our own. It’ll happen again, zero doubt.

Ultimately, the point is to appreciate my friends and family while we break bread together. And if that means expressing our love via angst about our food options and their cost, so be it. As native New Yorkers and New Englanders, we understand better than most that expressing angst is an important form of entertainment in and of itself.

So, put the mayonnaise down and walk away. Sir, step away from the mayo and, I beg you, do not let that mayo come in contact with the lobster!

Bramhall's Country Store

Lobster tanks and fresh picked corn.

Particular thanks to the wonderful people at Bramhall's Country Store for helping me find a (not so) little slice of Heaven during my recent trip home. http://www.bramhallcountrystore.com

A Victim of Larceny

A recent June morning on Independence Pass in Colorado

I’ve had some things I cherish stolen from me. I see the thieves every day, parading around as though they are proudly entitled to my belongings and as though I never really had a right to them in the first place. This blog post is not a way of politely asking for their safe return – asking politely would fall on deaf ears in the midst of the chest-thumping hate-filled and anger-ridden braggadocio of those shameless criminals.

I’ve had my flag stolen. I’ve had my patriotism stolen. And I want them back. Now.

I had a conversation with a friend last week that brought this repulsive thievery to light. My friend is self-made, a hard-working professional and a leader in our field, a pillar of our community, a big-hearted and generous person, and an articulate advocate for the issues and perspectives about which she is passionate. And last week this consummately modern American woman declared that she was going to wear black on July 4th, Independence Day. Instead of smashing a window to steal jewelry from the window of a shop on Main Street, the criminals broke her heart (and mine) and stole something far more precious.

How it is that festooning oneself in our Republic’s flag and use of the term “patriot” have become indicia of belonging the extreme right-wing, anti-democratic factions of American society may be an interesting historical footnote, but it is unimportant to me. I’m confident it has something to do with the sheer volume of their self-entitledness, the shortcomings of their primary school education, and their hatefulness for any who dare to disagree with them. What is important to me, however, is that we get our belongings back for our own use. I’m confident that neither Lincoln nor Douglas made the case that the other had no right to fly Old Glory.

Sadly, I am 100% confident that the extremist militia members and their supporters who wrap themselves in the Gadsden Flag (“Don’t Tread on Me”) as a means of cloaking their racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, and antisemitism are completely unaware of its origins with the Continental Marines. A quick web search for the Gadsden flag will make clear how brazenly those factions of American society have absconded with this once great symbol of our national unity. For the time being, the Gadsden flag actually may be too far gone to rehabilitate for its original use by us all; the Stars and Stripes most assuredly is not.

After some thought about my friend’s understandable grief about the direction our Republic has taken, a grief I share, I drew the opposite conclusion about my sartorial choices for Independence Day. Our grief, our frustration, our sense of loss for the principles that we hold dear as Americans are rooted in the importance of those principles to us as citizens. We are upset about the recent rulings of the United States Supreme Court and the revelations about the complicity of elected officials in the January 6th assault on the Capitol and its political purposes because we still believe in America and its promise of a better, safer, happier life for all of us. We are upset because in our hearts we still believe.

I was born on July 4th and I had an uncle named Sam. My Uncle Sam was the son of immigrants and a U.S. Navy veteran who fought in the Pacific during World War II. My Uncle Sam grew up in Brooklyn and, like all good kids from Brooklyn, he loved a good hot dog. He loved them so much that they were his litmus test for people. “Hey, kid” he’d say, “Do you like hot dogs?” And when the answer was “yes”, he’d beam and announce “They’re one of us; they can stay!”

So, on July 4th I’m going to wear Red, White and Blue. I would even seriously consider finding an Uncle Sam costume to wear to the parade on the village green. I’m going to take my flag back from the villains who took it and who threaten to take our country from us as well. I’m going to wear it while eating a hot dog with relish and extra mustard, celebrating Independence Day as all Americans can regardless of where we stand on the political spectrum.

And if anyone mistakes my patriotism for right-wing extremism, I’ll consider spitting a little extra mustard in their eye. Because I’m a bit pissed off and I am a native New Yorker. But I won’t do it, because I will have taken my flag back and I will not let it go again.

I proudly support the patriotic folks at @Morethanavote @PlannedParenthood and @naacp_ldf in their effort to ensure the promise of America for all of us.

Out of The Woods

May 20, 2022 in Basalt, Colorado

We’re not out of the woods yet.

It’s a funny expression, “out of the woods”, as though being in the woods represents some sort of difficulty or danger, something to be avoided. Perhaps we should blame the Brothers Grimm for placing in our collective Euro-centric psyche the idea that the woods are a place where bad things happen? Those damn Brothers Grimm.

Rock on up to any group of passionate Eastern skiers between the ages of 6 and 16 on a powder day and ask them where they want to go, and the answer is “in the woods”. In your face, Hansel and Gretel! I often joke that in Colorado people may ski in the trees but in the East we ski in the woods. And if that reflects a chip on my shoulder, so be it. Take that, Little Red Riding Hood!

I, for one, very much miss the woods of the Northeastern USA. In Colorado, where I’ve been living full-time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit (speaking of not being out of the woods yet), I do spend the majority of my days surrounded by trees and in winter I do love skiing in the “gladed” runs on our mountains. Still, somehow, these places are not “the woods”. Forest, yes; woods, no. The distinction is a meaningful one that is a challenge to articulate and that sort of falls into a totality of the circumstances perspective. I’ll try to explain with an example.

For several years, I spent my shoulder seasons conducting outdoor education programs for urban school children at the camp I attended as a child. At first, the city kids would be a little freaked-out by the quiet of sleeping in tents in the woods. And then, in something that never failed to bring me joy and as though the transmission of their sensory awareness had shifted gears to being in the natural world, several days later the same kids would complain about how difficult it was to sleep given how noisy the woods are. Those woods in the mountains of Northwestern Connecticut (near my “home village”) are particularly noisy places, seething with life. Birds, bugs, frogs, and animals of all sorts constantly contribute to the cacophony, and even the wind blowing across the tops of our ancient oaks sounds like giant waves in the ocean. At times, it is as though the entire canopy and every bush is buzzing, chirping, whirring, waving or singing. And that’s before we even talk about the woodpeckers, nature’s greatest percussion section.

There’s so much more to the woods than merely the sounds of the birds and bugs. The fragrance of the air and how it changes from season to season, the temperature and texture of the air, the sensations of the earth under foot, the ever-present trickling of water everywhere. When I fill out the arrival form for New Zealand immigration and check “yes” to the question of whether I’ve been in a forest recently, I do very much enjoy explaining that I am from Vermont and that the whole state is dense woodlands. Can you tell that I am homesick?

None of this is to say that the natural environment here in Colorado is somehow lacking. There is a reason that people flock here in all seasons and that the ski industry is littered with ex-pat East Coast folks. After all, there are good reasons that you don’t encounter many Colorado natives on chairlifts in the East. The climate here is terrific (if not a bit monotonous), there is more sunshine in an average week in the mountains of Colorado than Vermont gets in a year, the snow is justifiably famous, and the wildlife can be pretty impressive. Cry me a river – I think I’ll survive just fine here in the Rocky Mountains.

Still, Eastern woods live on in my DNA, in my world view, and in my psychological need for the stimuli of the natural environment. I am quite content, therefore, to dismiss the Brothers Grimm, Hansel and Gretel, and Little Red Riding Hood, and to find delightful irony in the idea that normal people are trying to get out of the woods while I dream of getting back into them. Except where pandemics are concerned – I wouldn’t mind being out of those metaphorical woods for good.

Jupe à la Mode

Some of the best pros I know, making "work" oodles of fun at Aspen, as usual.

I speak French. I excel at dining in French and I can execute a world class Gallic shrug, and I do also speak French pretty well. My grammar has definitely faded over the decades as has my vocabulary, but once I am immersed in a French environment I comport myself admirably. Especially for an American.

I even teach skiing in French when I’m lucky, as I did recently for several days with a super cool young graduate student. She is totally fluent in English but was a nervous beginner who was quite homesick in a way that left her really just wanting to learn skiing in French. We had a blast, she absolutely slayed it on the hill, and the crepes in Snowmass worked to transport us just that little bit closer to her home and her people. I hope she enjoyed her time learning skiing in this most foreign place as much as I enjoyed the experience of introducing her to our sport in a language that is not my own.

It’s always interesting to me when friends and colleagues ask me how I learned to speak French so well. I usually just explain that I studied French through Junior High School and High School with a bit of course work in college as well, and that I’ve worked with enough native French speakers to practice a bit, but that’s a simplification. Often, well-meaning people respond by bashfully describing their few years of French studies that never really took hold, which I appreciate but which also can make me feel a little sorry for them. I feel sorry for them not because it is somehow sad, but because the reality of why I speak and understand French so well, and why I love doing so, is that I had the tremendous good fortune to have two truly exceptional French teachers in my public schools in Upstate New York, and I understand how rare that is.

From seventh through twelfth grade, I went from novice fan of Inspector Clouseau to AP French standout under the gaze of Madames Seiler and Gropper. They were demanding, caring, always funny, often frustrated, and remarkably talented teachers. My best friends were Michel, Xavier, Solange, Lise and others, with our French names adopted for class as twelve-year-olds quickly becoming everyday nicknames outside of French class, and that’s not an accident. We loved it. My recollections are very non-specific – several decades later, my ability to speak la belle langue far outstrips any specific memories of how they taught us. Still, I know precisely why I succeeded then and now, and it was those two remarkable teachers who are responsible. I choose to not deconstruct what made them such exceptional teachers (if that is even possible); I prefer instead to think of it as a combination of superb technical skill, copious amounts of passion, and a healthy dose of magic.

Obviously, sans doute, there is a lesson for us here that has nothing to do with my laguage skills. The lesson is about the impact of great teaching and, as it turns out, I teach and train teachers for a living. Although love for the sport and technical advancement are aligned in a meaningful and substantive way, the love for the sport is vastly more important because without it, our raison d’etre as skiers, our reason for being skiers in the first place, simply disappears. Keeping this front and center in our minds when we’re working together to hone our craft as instructors and when we’re working with students of every level and every age is vital. And it always brings to mind the great instructors, coaches, and teachers under whose spell I’ve been so fortunate to fall in my life.

‘Do you remember your ski instructors as a kid?’, I ask new instructors. Did those instructors plant the seed in you for a love of skiing for the rest of your life? Do you realize that this is now your job, your charge, your burden, and your blessing? I wouldn’t trade it for anything, and sharing that, speaking about it with others who choose to pursue our profession is absolutely vital.

Every Halloween, Madame Seiler would wear an oddly long, 50’s style skirt with a big, fake, plastic ice cream scoop stuck to it. Her explanation was that for Halloween she was dressed as a “jupe à la mode”, which in French means a fashionable skirt and in English means a skirt slathered in ice cream. She loved it, and in my mind’s eye I still can see her big grin and enormously long arms gesticulating wildly as she explained her costume to the unwary.

For me, the open question is whether, several decades from now, the grownups who ski with me as kids now will still giggle as they borrow my line that ‘it’s … just … snot … funny. Nope, definitely snot funny at all.’ It’s not quite the jupe à la mode, but it is my joke and, well, you never know; maybe it will stick.

The Smell of Melting Plastic

October snow along the Frying Pan River in Basalt, Colorado

I’m in search of something, some place in particular. My search is partly experiential but mostly existential. The search forms an integral part of my skiing life, and it’s triggered by olfactory memory. Pretty much every ski town in which I’ve spent time as a skier, athlete, coach, instructor, and trainer has a place that fits the bill, and at this time of year it’s at the forefront of my thinking.

I can see it clearly. Pull into a parking lot alongside vehicles that include trucks in use by tradespeople, expensive suburban SUV’s, beat up old Honda sedans, and a greater than average number of Subarus. Open the equipment manufacturer sticker-decorated front door and the old fashioned tinkling of a bell on the threshold barely can be heard over the din of power tools and the distant hum of exhaust fans mostly doing their job. And then the smells hit me: p-tex and wax being melted, polyurethane being ground, and something vaguely wooly in the humid autumn air. It’s a ski shop, of course, and I can feel the warmth as I write.

At the boot tech benches, a fitter is working with a race coach discussing an athlete’s tibia length and cuff height - the boot fitter is a faster ski racer than the coach and they both know and are totally comfortable with that. A guest is sitting on a bench with their jeans rolled up to their knees in hope of enjoying their ski days more and longer in comfort, happy to be taking their time to do so while looking at glossy powder photos and soaking in the atmosphere. Downstairs, binding plates are being drilled into place using age old jigs that hang on the wall when not in use and that form part of the decor. Somehow shoe-horned into the back-shop are shiny, modern, computerized, water-cooled ski tuning machines that amazingly have not displaced the numerous devices that seem non-technical and ancient but still current and effective in a way that shows the arc of time for all of us who ski. Magazine back issues and the occasional leather ski boot sit on any available surface, and there is definitely an empty pizza box somewhere. A jar of Dermatone tins sits on the counter. The FedEx driver drops off a few boxes with a simple wave and a ‘see ya’ to nobody in particular. Long after my walking in and poking around, the large old dog finally acknowledges my presence and then goes back to sleep in the corner, making me feel validated as a ski pro to have gotten her approval. It’s OK, the big dog thinks as she settles in at her slow winter speed, he’s one of us.

On the road through my career in the Northeastern USA, I know the manifestation of this shop in pretty much every mountain town I’ve visited. And if I don’t, I certainly can find it quickly in a pinch and there is tremendous comfort in that. One of the vexing issues of having relocated to a fancy-schmancy Rocky Mountain resort is that I haven’t really found a place where I can just walk in to say hello and pick the brain of an expert with an encyclopedic memory of the bones in my particular feet while discussing the evolution of sidewall construction and whether the wasp nests were high or low in the woods this year. It’s just a matter of time until I do – in Aspen, they may just be hidden behind the razzle dazzle, but they’re here.

At this time of year more than any other, after spinning my wheels all summer and dealing with big picture industry issues and concerns with my colleagues, it’s a really wonderful thing to get operational with ‘getting my new setup dialed’ and geeking it up with current equipment offerings. Did you see the boots being tested in Hintertux? How much slow rise does the new powder ski have? Doesn’t this remind you of that funny boutique Swiss ski from the ‘80’s? Did you see that CB Sports is back in business?! My thoughts turn to my friends and family at The Boot Pro in Ludlow, Vermont, whose hashtag #biggestlittleskishop says it all - I miss them. Funny though it sounds, the olfactory memories of the shop and all the shops like it get me daydreaming, bringing to mind the sensations of skiing, the images of my equally devoted friends grinning, and they warm my heart and reinvigorate my true love of skiing and ski people.

There’s snow on the hills. I am very ready for winter. And I’m very curious to see if my off-season fitness will have changed my alignment for my super sweet just-arrived new Nordicas. I’ll just have to find the shop that I can imagine in order to find out!

Ice Cream Sundaes, Mini-Golf, and Ski Lessons

My niece and nephew have grown since this gem, but my duty as their uncle remains the same.

Step 1: Imagine an ice cream sundae. Actually, just in case you’re a jaded grown-up, imagine you’re a kid imagining an ice cream sundae on a hot summer day. No kid worth their weight in, umm, kid matter would need an explanation of the difference between a dish of ice cream and an ice cream sundae. If you need this spelled out for you, find the nearest kid under the age of 6 and interview them – I am confident they’ll be clear and exacting in their description, especially on a hot summer day.

Step 2: Imagine that you’ve gotten some little kid you know excited for an ice cream sundae on a hot summer day. Then, rather than taking them to the Palace of Gigantic Technicolor Fantasmagoric Ice Cream Awesomeness they’ve imagined, you take them to a temple of gastronomy for a little dish of hyper-clever, immaculately presented, technically masterful, Michelin-starred, deconstructed ice-cream concept molecular gastronomy. Words fail me in attempting to articulate their likely reaction, but I can see their confused and disappointed tear-filled faces in my minds’ eye. It breaks my heart and makes me want to seek them out, buy them an ice cream, and trade bad uncle jokes while strolling along the nearest boardwalk in order to rescue their childhood.

I feel the same way about mini-golf. And skiing. For adults as well as kids.

Now that you’ve dusted off your child-like imagination, try this: imagine yet another hot summer evening where, after a suitably summery smorgasbord of splendifolous ice cream sundaes, you and your friends of all ages decide to walk on over to the mini-golf course for some down-home healthy fun. You pay for the rounds from the high-schooler in the hut, find the right sized beat up old putter with the least sticky grip, identify the strangest fluoro pink golf ball with orange flames on it just because, and proceed to the famous first hole with the windmill. Please work with me here, I have a point to make about teaching snow sports.

Finally, as you and your friends, young and old, are giggling on your way to the famous first hole with the windmill, a very good-looking stranger with a bright toothy grin and wearing impressive golf clothing stops you and directs you to the practice hole that has no windmill, and then tells you that first you need to learn proper mechanics in order to have more success on the mini-golf course. Rest assured, he or she tells you, they are an outstanding golfer and a certified pro, and they are uniquely capable of teaching you the latest, greatest techniques for guaranteeing your success on that particular mini-golf course. You may have to buy an expensive new putter but that comes later. Suddenly, the windmill seems very far away on the horizon.

The disappointment of being on the practice hole at a mini-golf course would be the same as with the kid in the fancy schmancy restaurant. We imagine total awesomeness and have whiplash as we’re yanked into something that is somehow rational, well-conceived and ultimately effective but is totally decoupled from why we’re there in the first place.

Sliding around on snow is not merely fun. It’s healthy for body mind and spirit in ways big and small, and it’s super duper fun. It’s so much fun that adults and kids spend lots of money, travel very far, wear other people’s clothes, and occasionally sacrifice otherwise promising careers to do it all the time. Somehow, however, our snow sports schools and instructor organizations are still inexplicably fighting the reflex to codify, regulate, and otherwise sap the fun out of beginner experiences in the name of technical proficiency. When I see these ‘perfectly executed beginner progressions’, it fills me with the same reflex of wanting to save the guests – in winter that may still include bad uncle jokes but the ice cream may be replaced with hot chocolate and lots of sliding around on terrain that doesn’t scare the snot out of them. The Italian and Swiss ski schools have some really inventive ‘snow gardens’ for kids and, notably, Smugglers Notch Resort in Vermont has done an excellent job making their kids’ beginner area oodles of fun. Still, capturing the imagination of adults and kids and making sure that their learning experiences align with their expectations of awesomeness is a mission for all of us. Truthfully, this also is equally true for experts and beginners alike.

Ultimately, unlike mini-golf, the greatest advantage we have in our sports is that the mere act of sliding on snow is fun in and of itself – this is true whether the backdrop is Maroon Bells in Aspen, the Green Mountains of Vermont, frozen Lake Superior, wherever, no windmill needed. The real risk is that the instructor with the big grin, the fancy gear, and big words will just screw that up for the guests. I have yet to see a beginner area with a windmill or an ice cream stand serving ginormous sundaes, but maybe that’s something to consider.

In the interim, when the heat wave in California is done cooking people, the forest fires in the Rockies are done burning everything up, and it stops raining in New England, I’ll look forward to doing my duty as an uncle and buying my niece and nephew an  ice cream sundae and enjoying it together in the sunshine. After all, it’s my job. Hey kiddo, chocolate sauce or caramel? Ooh, let’s have both!