THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM Skiers load the bus that carries folks from the city center to Revelstoke Mountain Resort. Vans of all shapes and sizes are a common sight in Revelstoke—and slightly roomier to live in than a Subaru. FAR RIGHT Boosting to the moon is never a bad idea when the landings are this soft. An unknown skier takes flight at Rogers Pass near Revelstoke. I SHIFT IN MY SLEEPING BAG, wincing at the icy burn of cold metal from my zipper, and try to ignore the soft crunch and crackle of frozen goose down. Grabbing a book from the makeshift shelf, I skim through two paragraphs of Gladwellian prose by the light of a dim headlamp before deciding my hands are too cold to flip the pages. I curl back toward a fetal position and resign myself to listening to the muffled serenade of idling semis just beyond my icy windows. It’s worth it. Always is. Words tend to fail me—a critical fault for a writer, I’m aware—when asked why I love this town so much. What makes Revelstoke worth living in the back of my pickup every season for the past four Canadian winters? My thoughts shift from the blankness outside to next week’s annual firefighters-versus-cops hockey game. The 20-minute conversation about microbus conversions outside the library parking lot in sub-Arctic cold. The sound of old Delicas, the smell of new wax, the nirvana of a fast, silky layer of hoar over bottomless powder, old growth cedars, the whoomph of a pillow compressing under ski, and the jolt into present when your tires fishtail on the sweeping turn just past the Asulkan Lot. It’s much like the snow falling beyond my frosted win-dows—the amalgamation of scores of small, unique, almost indescribable things, weightless in and of themselves, together creating a blanket of essential matter. A lot of little nothings; collectively, everything. This is the community I know and love. The sum total of the minutiae. It’s gritty. Charming. Perpetually stoked. It’s Revy. 052 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 1: Page 52
