MEDIA REVIEW THE SKI TOWN FAIRYTALE A GRAPHIC TAKE ON CURATED REALITY We see it on our screens every day, but how far will you go to live the ski dream? Photo: Kade Krichko Words CHRISTINE MCMANIGAL HOW DOES ONE BECOME a modern ski bum? Begin with feeling intense FOMO after scrolling through your social media. Make sure you really envy those that seem to be carefree and are always finding the best snow. Next, start comparing yourself to what you see online, in movies and magazines. Start to loathe your life until one day, you implode. You quit your job, pack everything up and drive to one of the best resorts around. But what will you do next? Written by Sam Morse and illustrated by Ryan Stolp—two mountain town pilgrims themselves— The Ski Town Fairytale: A Quest to Live the Dream is a coffee-table graphic novel that follows the fictitious tale of Sophie, a young veterinarian that sets out to live that ski dream. Inspired by the media around her, Sophie believes her purpose is in the mountains. However, when she gets there, Sophie realizes she isn’t prepared for how that same social media and the lifestyles of the rich and few have altered ski culture and the mountain towns that support it. In the book’s foreword, outdoors journalist and Jackson, WY, local Lily Krass illustrates her own childhood dream of being a ski bum and how that dream ultimately came with strings. “Pull back the curtain on those carefully curated Instagram squares...you start to realize the proverbial dream isn’t as simple as we like to think,” she writes. “And the overwhelming homogeneity for the outdoor industry has kept the dream out of reach for all but those already set up to succeed.” The ski-bum dream is not gone, but it has been modified. To-day’s ski bum isn’t a sun-weathered old-timer, scoring first turns while hoarding free granola bars. Instead, it’s the privileged—the influencers, the telecommuters, or those that can afford the ever-increasing price of an all-inclusive season pass. In 2017, Bloomberg published a study on the wealthiest small towns in America. Based on their index of affluent micro areas, these expensive small towns included ski communities such as Jackson, Breckenridge, Steamboat Springs, and Edwards, CO. Nearly 10 percent of the Edwards population had a household income of over $200,000, which is four times what a lift operator at nearby Vail makes during that same time period according to Glassdoor.com. The realities of mountain towns are stark, which makes the graphic novel delivery even more intriguing. Traditionally, this format is widely popularized for younger readers focused on visual and often superficial topics, but Morse molds the medium to fit a narrative laced with real-life issues. It’s entertainment, sure, but also a sketch-art window into the underbelly of ski towns everywhere. The graphic novel execution is also a tongue-in-cheek barb at ski culture itself. For the many that choose to chase a life of first tracks and never fully “grow up” in the most traditional sense, what better way to convey the culture’s idiosyncrasies than with an adult comic book? Social commentary aside, ultimately this work is a fairy tale, and Morse leaves us on an uplifting note. Even with the myriad pitfalls of ski towns, it’s easy to root for Sophie’s pursuit of excite-ment on snow. As Morse puts it, finally achieving the dream isn’t the end of the ski-bum story, maybe it’s just the beginning. The Ski Town Fairytale A Quest to Live the Dream Written by Sam Morse Illustrated by Ryan Stolp 46 pages. Copies at: RyanStolp.com/fairytale $40 104 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 2: Page 104
