As mom & I are buzzing across the Mediterranean from Athens to Naxos it feels like a perfect opportunity to reflect on where I am and where I’ve been over the last seven months. And holy crap, it’s been a lot. As much as I couldn’t have predicted it all a year ago, every step along the way has felt right and exactly how it should be. What an amazing experiment demonstrating how glimmer of an idea can so soon become the life you’re now living.
Quit Job – Check
Pack life into storage space – Check
Live on boat sailing between remote islands in the South Pacific – Check
Ski bum for a winter – Check
And my goodness, what a checkbox it was! Looking back, I skiied EXACTLY 50 days this season, with a solid month straight of those being powder days. Beyond that, every ski mountain and town came with its own unique experiences, people and atmosphere. It feels almost unfair that I got that much incredible skiing in places I wanted to visit anyways. I’m not going to say it was all luck, but I couldn’t have asked for it to have evolved any better. In all I skiied 21 resorts, put about 5000 miles on the car, and had 22 legit powder days. I also wondered how good of a skier I could become if I dedicated myself to it for a season and wasn’t confined to weekends and vacations… and this just in, skiing every day DOES make you a better skier! Who knew! I think back to days at Mt. Baker at the beginning of this tour, and following locals through 1-2 feet of fresh snow a consistency unlike any I’d skied before was kinda hard at the time! Their advice: turn less, even though that face drops out of sight in a few yards and yep there’s cliffs around here but trust I’m not taking you off one right now (if you can keep up and watch my line). As the ski days racked up I got used to instantly tweaking my form for a new snow consistency, and also recognized that my skis had lost their flex so upgraded to a pair that responded again. In trees I started seeing my line 2, 3 and 4 turns ahead instead of one, and in more open terrain I stopped picking my turns and Just. Skied. Down. I never got truly fluent in French when I was in highschool, but I got to a point where certain words were no longer the translation of their english counterpart and instead they held meaning on their own. In the same vein, I started thinking skiing – no longer thinking “turn here”, “adjust your balance here”, but just responding to the snow and the slope in front of me, “thinking” less and less with every day. Seems like a perfect analogy for this journey… Have an idea, do your research and make some plans, but the less you try to “control” every move and the more you accept and respond to what comes your way, the more you’ll enjoy it and get to experience it fully.
Volunteer for and experience SxSW – Check
And on top of all that, just to make this tale even more storybook, I met this incredible man in Rossland BC, the quaintest and most authentic of ski mountain towns, during their Winter Carnival on the dance floor of a killer brass band concert that I scored tickets for an hour earlier. After 4 days in Rossland, he joined me to ski in Nelson BC for 4 days, then we met up again in Sandpoint ID for 3 days, and I swung through Rossland again for 4 more days on my way back down to the states properly capping my two-month tour through the Northwest. And then we roadtripped from Denver to Tahoe and back to volunteer for the WinterWondergrass music festival. And he just so happens to also be travelling through Europe this summer. There’s so much more I could say on the topic, but being that this blog is for public consumption I’ll summarize by saying I feel INCREDIBLY fortunate. Thank you Universe! For the boat, the snow, the guy, the friends, the family, the freedom, the booming Denver real estate market for (hopefully) fluffing my travel budget just a smidge… For the ability to be HERE (which literally is Greece, but figuratively is Anywhere, Earth) living, exploring, experiencing, connecting, seeing, learning, and appreciating 🙂 Onwards!
