After the apocalypse

A man should have wings to carry him where his dreams go but sometimes a pair of skis makes a good substitute

Hans Gmoser, 1932-2006

The day after the Mayan Apocalypse, I went backcountry skiing.

Old tracks graced the parking lot, and old tracks graced the trail.  The recent snow over the past few days had started the long process of masking the old marks of people, and it almost felt sacrilegious to slow down the erasure of human activity.  But I knew, too, that it would only be temporary.  The snow was still drifting down, and given time my tracks too would be erased.

My destination was Tower Lake and, if conditions permitted, Rockbound Lake behind the towering precipice of Castle Mountain.  It’s a fair distance – about 8 km to the lakes – and skiing is necessarily slower than walking on dry ground.  Or at least it is when going up.  And despite the initially cold temperatures, I was soon sweating my way up through the forest.

Many skiers would despair of such a trip.  I had no plans to ski any slopes, as I was entirely by myself.  And without the prospect of powder, why bother making such a trip?  It’s a hard question to answer in words, but the answer is obvious when you’re travelling through the still forest.  When the world is muffled by a layer of pristine snow and the only sound is the swish of your skis and the panting of your lungs the answer is obvious.  When you break out into a meadow without a single shred of evidence of other life, and you stop to listen to the world and it is so quiet that the only sound you hear is a slight ringing in your ears, the answer is obvious.  I need no apocalypse to wipe away humanity: I need only point myself towards the mountains and go.  I am truly fortunate to have such places so close to where I live.  I pity those who do not have the opportunity to travel – simply – through a snow covered forest, and I pity even more those who cannot understand why one would do so.  The sense of peace it brings is indescribable.  

Take some time this winter, and go embrace the cold and the snow.  Leave your living room, leave your kitchen, leave the warmth of the inside.  Escape into a world where the snow gently falls onto an untrammeled landscape, where the silence is disconcerting in its entirety, where evidence of your passing will soon be wiped away and it will be as though you had never existed.

Go find yourself again.