During my time in Stanley, Idaho this past January I gained a new emotional connection to this beautiful natural place. It wasn’t simply because of the aesthetic draw of the landscape or the backcountry skiing, but something stronger, more fundamental. This feeling I had was strong but I couldn’t put it into words and it has been killing me for the past couple months here in St. Louis. Through the course I remember hearing about a writer by the name Dolores LaChapelle who spoke in a way about powder snow that was intoxicating. Full of thought and emotion, with details of philosophy and imagery that I thought truly explained the experience. So this was where I started my search for that feeling that I simply couldn’t put my finger on.
My search started by a quick google which was truly disappointing with very little information about her and her books. Diving deeper I found a couple books that sounded interesting, Earth Wisdom and Deep Powder Snow: 40 Years of Ecstatic Skiing, Avalanches and Earth Wisdom. To my surprise there were not only no summaries or bios about these books but that all her books are out of print entirely. So, with this information, I went straight to Ebay to see what I could find used. There I was shocked again to see that Deep Powder Snow was a $120 used book, however luckily, Earth Wisdom was still affordable but still a $8.00 used! Anyways, the only way to get my hands on Deep Powder Snow then was an interlibrary loan from Yale University Mountaineering Collection.
So last month I picked it up and finally finished reading it. Not only is it a $120 book but it is no more than 100 pages and just about an inch larger (on either side) then my passport! But all I can say is that I can now I understand why this tiny book cost so much. I has changed the way I think about my connection to nature as well as what powder snow means to me. I would call this book the philosophy powder skiing to anyone who is a skier. I will probably have many more posts covering the topics she covered and my opinion of them, but the reason I’m even writing this is because I think she put into words what I felt when in Stanley.
Now my thoughts are still scattered but I think what I’ve gotten out of it is that through powder snow and being at the will of nature you not only become closer to your surroundings but also gain insight into things beyond what’s in our skin, or our minds. She talks about how the feeling of skiing powder allows our minds to perceive things that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to. The most important concept that I think will direct the way I make decisions about the rest of my life is that you can never separate the human organism from the ecosystem, that the second you do this you lose the ability to truly be in tune with yourself.
All in all it has really made me think and I can’t wait to read it one last time before I have to return it. Here are some quotes that I really liked:
“Why do I climb for hours for a handful of turns in untracked snow? Why do I grin and dance afterward? Why is fun such an anemic answer to the question above? Powder snow skiing is not fun. It’s life, fully lived, life lived in a blaze of reality. What we experience in powder is the original human self, which lies deeply inside each of us, still undamaged in spite of what our present culture tries to do to us. Once experienced, this kind of living is recognized as the only way to live—fully aware of the earth and the sky and the gods and you, the mortal, playing among them.”
“One can never be board by powder skiing because it is a special gift of the relationship between earth and sky. It only comes in sufficient amounts in particular places, at certain times on this earth; it lasts only a limited amount of time before sun or wind changes it. People devote their lives to it “for the pleasure of being so purely played” by gravity and snow.”