On Yom Kippur in the mountains, tashlich with tea
[This post originally appeared on PolicyMic.] Today is Yom Kippur, and I just did tashlich with tea. Let’s not talk about why I’m drinking tea on a day of fasting (I happen to be coming down with a cough), or why I’m doing tashlich at the last possible minute (because I’m forgetful and lazy), or...
Digression
Life is tough. Reading Mark Twain travel essays on the American West, in the American West. It is notable how much different the mountains are now than a century and a half ago when Twain was venturing through the western slopes of the Rockies. It no longer takes weeks to cross the mountains, and there...
Sociopathic
(Sometimes, writing about nomadism gets distracted by nomadism itself.) I’ve all of a sudden started to think about The Salesman as a modern social archetype. John Goodman’s character in Barton Fink is, perhaps, its ultimate example, an ebullient and chatty modern nomad whose winning demeanor harbors an undercurrent of, to put it innocently, malcontent. The...
Strawberries
To be completely honest — I’ll make no bones about it (where does that expression come from, anyway?) — this winter has been lousy snow-wise. Some say it’s the worst in thirty years, some say longer. What’s certainly true is we’ve had less snow this year than any in recent memory, and somewhere around half...
The Fallacy of Friendship
There is a peculiar fallacy of friendship in the valley. It goes something like this: I drink with you once and we’re best friends forever. [Party Hard, Rock and Roll (Drink Bacardi, Smoke a Bowl)] Here’s my number, what’s yours, let’s ride tomorrow? Right on brother, shred the gnar and hit the pow. (It’s like...
The Asshole
She hands him his $0.64 in change and as he walks away with his coffee in hand, he gestures towards the tip jar: “put it towards your college fund.” We turn and stare at him with our jaws dropped, and as his back is turned I flip him the bird. Perhaps inappropriate, but well-deserved. A...
Obligatory Ski-Life Metaphor
You either have so many choices—such a wide expanse of space, a million lines and a million options—or you have none: a death-defying, boulder-scraping drop off the end, a last minute bail to avoid a tree-trunk, one wrong step and it’s over. You choose your path, the wide frolic or the narrow chute. It’s harder,...
People of faith
Some might say this is a godless town, or a godless lifestyle. In the traditional, that is to say conventional or conservative, sense it is true. The beer alone attests to this, the drugs and sex cement it. But we are people of faith. Some have their faith stored away in organized religion, and here...
Healthy dose
Being a ski-bum requires a certain tranquil austerity, a profound respectful regard for nature. Mountains are big. They are tall, they are cold, windy, icy, snowy, sunny, slippery, rock-ridden, tree-covered, precarious beasts of geology. Geology and nature, serene though they may seem, are unpredictable. Weather can turn at any minute, or a seemingly solid, soft...
How We Got Here, Take 1
I graduated from college in the spring of 2009. That fall, that is to say, the previous fall, the fall of 2008, was the infamous Great Collapse of the Economy and Dashing of All Our Hopes and Dreams. Now, I went to one of those fancy east coast private ivy-on-the-walls type schools, so it is...
A pursuit of happiness
What it comes down to, really, is a very simple question. Is there anything more important in life, as an adult with a reasonably complete application of free will, than happiness? Ought happiness ever be subservient to other, external forces? Does or can perpetual fun be equated with happiness? Because Tom Robbins (Skinny Legs and...
