Words: Mike Rogge 2018-12-10 14:59:22
In 2002, I was a teenager who didn’t know what I wanted to do with my future, but knew I wanted to ski that weekend. A friend’s father teased me that I had no direction. My heart and head were in agreement that I wanted to ski backward, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. The ski movies and magazines I devoured mostly informed my decisions. Back then, my own father and I would hop in his truck and make the hour-and-a-half drive to Killington for reliably timed November opening days. We skied warm-up runs together before I entered the early season terrain park to ski around all of the rails that scared the crap out of me. At the end of the day, we would stop at a ski shop, where I would pick up a copy of the latest films. At home, movies like Session 1242 and Strike Three were played over and over, homework be damned. In my room, I memorized trick names, uncovered locations of handrails, and discovered places out West that my little East Coast self would likely never ski, but baffled me all the same. Also reliable, Freeze Magazine arrived in our mailbox. I’d read “Ask Brad,” a tongue-in-cheek advice column penned by Brad Holmes. Photographs ran of what went down on the glacier that summer, no doubt a new trick like an underflip thrown by a new skier I hadn’t heard of named Vincent Dorian. The modern history of skiing unfolded before my wide, excited eyes. These moments marked much of my teenage years, too. I remember prom and when C.R. Johnson threw a bio 1260 at the US Freeskiing Open. I recall struggling to find a college I wanted to attend and meeting Seth Morrison at a Matchstick Productions premiere in Saratoga Springs, NY, the year he hucked his rodeo 720s off giant cliffs. That was cool. College? What? My senior quote was from an ad I saw of Pep Fujas about the grass not always being greener. That’s the kind of kid I was. I loved skiing. You could have called me a ski dork, because by all accounts, including the one of my friend’s father, my obsession was true and unwavering and a little bit annoying. At 16, I began making the drive to Killington without dad in a 1998 black Cherokee Country. In the CD player were burnt mixes of ski film soundtracks. Lost on a long highway, I replayed segments in my head. By the time I arrived at the parking lot, my brain had recalled an epic ski day before I’d ever booted up. These daydreams still live inside me, but now the handrails of the East Coast I never had the courage to slide have been replaced by more modest goals-—a powder day with my wife on a quiet Saturday at Alpine Meadows. I got to ski those West Coast mountains after all. I still love skiing, but I tend to obsess about other things now—a mortgage, our dogs, my newborn son, in no particular order. When I’m in a coffee shop or driving alone in the car and a song from a ski film comes on, I am transported to a place I once knew, where no trick is impossible and every mountain in the world is still skiable. Photo Caption: The late-CR Johnson led a generation that influenced millions of skiers around the world. Photo: Josh Anderson
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Daydreams
https://digital.theskijournal.com/articles/daydreams