Snow is the Mother Church for my Gospel of freedom and
energy – which is why I chased it across 7 states last month. It was literally a journey of fire and ice
the first couple days, as I passed a burning farmhouse in Wyoming and survived
an ice storm in the mountains of Utah.
But then I was back in Hailey, Heidi-ho (Idaho), drinking blackberry
malts at the Snow Bunny, nestled among familiar places with cool names like The
Wicked Spud.
Not so familiar the next day. “You can’t get lost,” my dear friend and host
Bruce Norvell assures me when we hit the mountains on skinny skis. Oh, can’t I?
With hundreds of miles of enchanting Nordic ski trails, getting lost is
kind of the point. You can leave your
car at the base of a mountain, hitchhike up 20K or more, then ski back down to where
you parked. So maybe we overdid it a
little by parking UP a mountain, skiing down from the 14K marker to the end of
our run and then turning back up the mountain.
Bruce tells me to take off at that point for a solo run, which I do. But somehow I blow past the 14K between
Prairie Creek and Cathedral Pines. When
the trail peters out, I keep climbing and wind up on snowmobile tracks. Finally, realizing I missed the car, I take off
my skis and try to shortcut back through deep drifts. Soaked, exhausted, cold, dehydrated, thoroughly
lost in falling snow and carrying skis and poles, I slog along a line I hope is
dead reckoning.
Only it isn’t.
My buddy and his dog never come in sight. So now I’m thinking something happened to
him. Never mind that it’s me who’s gotten
himself in trouble, the conviction grows in my paper thin skull that Bruce, who
skis this stuff alone practically every day, is lying with a broken leg in some
snowbank. I’m like Don Quixote, and
every story I’ve ever read or written about dying of exposure in the Yukon or
on Mount Everest is coming back to me. An
adrenaline surge spikes my blood because this
is really happening! And how am I
going to rescue my lifelong buddy when I’m shaking with fatigue and so out of
calories I can’t find the road, let alone the trail? I try calling, but my voice is just a frozen
warble in my throat. Hoping to pick up
tracks, I begin zigzagging across the tundra.
Zigzag. Bruce’s dog is Ziggy, and
maybe it is that similarity between name and description which finally brings
Zig the Wonder Dog and then Bruce hisself in sight, totally unscathed. Too easy to get lost, too easy to get in
trouble, too easy to imagine the worst, and I did all three. But all’s well that ends well. And it really ended well an hour or so later when
I got another Snow Bunny blackberry malt through an IV. Or maybe it was through a straw.
The great adventures from ensuing days defy capturing. And how do you describe après adventure stuff like scintillating conversations about
everything under the sun, or Bruce lighting a stove fire with a blowtorch as we
kick back at his horse ranch for a Roku documentary on the fabulous Goran Kropp’s
odyssey or the flick “Blue Jasmine,” or Sully cooking pecan chicken with
clementines, or dinner at Dashi’s followed by dancing at the Duchin room in the
lodge at Sun Valley where Bruce and friend Janice lit up the dance floor with
world-class sashays, spins, dips and patented moves worthy of primetime, or the
hikes and drives? You had to be
there.
Hopefully the few pictures at the end of this email will
sharpen the focus: #1 just another mundane miracle of nature; #2 Bruce at
Galena Lodge; #3 bulletproof rugged scarps like this surround you in the
mountains; #4 not so bulletproof are these “natural” reminders that avalanches
can start whenever you get near vertical snow; #5 me at the start of Gladiator
Loop; #6 another dynamic thrust of mountains you won’t see me trying to ski; #7
starting a snowball fight with Bruce to work up an appetite for breakfast; #8
Walt Disneyesque scenery like this is my favorite part of winter; #9 a slightly
more friendly snow slope; #10 Bruce and Janice dancing at the Duchin room in
Sun Valley Lodge (had a great conversation with Joe Fos, a consummate pianist
who studied at Juilliard and whose trio entertained us all night); #11 moi just as the snow starts to fly on a
trail called Psycho Adventure; #12 another establishing shot for the day’s
perspective in either the Sawtooth or Pioneer Mountains (don’t bother me with names
– I just skinny ski ‘em).
And if you’d like to feel what it’s like more vividly, here’s
a short stormskiing vid I posted on YouTube.
Watch this magnificent setting on a big screen with the volume up
full. You can hear the ice pellets
pinging on the camera lens, and you will almost ski into a creek – hard to tell
but the tail of one ski is over unsupported snow! Wish I’d gotten the whole run, which was
quite long, on video. In fact, I was
singing another great buddy’s hit – soul bro Glenn Frey’s “The Long Run” – to
myself on the way down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K729kS02TNI&feature=youtu.be
My column on StorytellersUnplugged this month will use this
newsletter for the main feature. Here’s
the link: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2014/04/15/thomas-sullivan-zigzag/#respond
Nature kick-starts those pathetically scarce elements in my
soul that have the power to redeem me.
And sometimes that’s all you need.
As I wrote in Facebook recently, hope already achieves its ends just by
being hope. And if you can get that far,
you are only a little courage and a little imagination away from making dreams
into realities. Hope your dreams are
becoming your reality. My mailbox
overflows with laments from people who feel life is passing them by, but
virtually all of them are complicit with their own imprisonment. Keeping faith with life’s contradictions,
façades and disappointments shouldn’t keep you from finding yourself in inner
sanctums, private sanctuaries and daily moments where magic still lives and you
can be true to yourself. As in my recent
adventure recounted above, sometimes you have to zigzag through the storm in
order to survive and find what you seek.
Thomas "Sully" Sullivan
You can see all my books in any format here on my webpage or follow me on Facebook: http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com
