Matthew Bunker praises Mother Earth as he drops into the Womb at Rogers Pass. REVY, LIKE THE SNOW that falls here, is an insulator. There’s an infinite silence to heavy snowfall. Not the silence that echoes around an empty void, but rather a tangible, vis-cous, omnipresent silence—muffling, then ultimately muting everything around until you’re left with a voluminous nothing. A poor man’s sensory deprivation tank. Emails, schedules, the tasks we so often cling to as necessary life forces—they dis-sipate into the soupy gray inversion that hangs over the village most of the winter. The alpine breeds clarity. The untrodden sheet of winter has a way of sharpening focus. My alarm finally goes off, breaking my midwinter medita-tion. I’ve been up for hours, but the piercing tones jolt me from my thoughts. I pull on the layers I’ve been warming next to me in my sleeping bag and carefully lift the back hatch of the truck to keep from dumping snow inside my humble abode. I lower the tailgate, fumble with a lighter, and pull out a slushy Nalgene from the foot of my bag. Snow is still falling heavily, silently, only interrupted by grunts and Ger-man swearing coming from my international friends’ camper. The visitor center lights flicker on. In a couple of minutes, I’ll have steaming oatmeal in hand as I walk into the Roger Pass Discovery Centre. I’ll greet the three rangers like long-lost friends, and the elder one will ask if we camped out last night. I’ll say “yes,” he’ll shake his head and laugh. “We all alone up here?” “Yup, pass is closed for the day, might not even open tomorrow.” “Perfect. You folks want some banana bread?” Writer’s Note: This piece was written following the 2018/2019 season, before the outbreak of COVID-19. In response to the pandemic, Parks Canada banned front country overnight camping in the Discovery Centre lot for the 2020/2021 winter season; there’s no word yet as to what the policy will be for the upcoming season. Revelstoke 059
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 1: Page 59
