We received this email from Dave Knoop of Park City, Utah in mid April. It
reflects on why we love cold weather, snow and winter.
– It's a tough time of year, I LOVE WINTER! It's soo clean and bright, and
when it's not, it's storming and the snow flurries get me even more excited
to get out and play. Snow in Utah means life, it means semi green summers to
a place that can get quite dry. If we have an average snow year it means at
least through half the summer, we see green mountains before the place
looks like Afghanistan as the blast furnace of glare and heat can have us
visulalising winter as a distant mirage and ask ourselves did it really
happen, was it really snowy last winter and more importantly sometimes
especially with Global Warming….was it cold? Will it ever snow
again???????
Right now I ski once or twice a week up on Strawberry Ridge, a place that
can be like mid winter until late April early May. It's like saying goodbye
to an old friend who is dying, a tad sad.
As I ski long and slow this time of year by now the effort is not hard to
ski a long thought provoking ski and very enjoyable not to push the pace and
or worry about any upcoming races. I look back on the months of training, as
a masters citizen racer, and the toll it took on it's a difficult balance of
training, work and family. The priorities sometimes get confusing. Did I do
it right? What would I do differently? Am I still in love with cross country
skiing, what were the highlights to training and racing the past year????
Will I really be dedicated to roller skiing in the months where you sweat
like a pig, take on cars, pavement, etc….?????
In April, I will ski through some beautiful wooded areas that protect the
snow as well as skiing some fantastic ridgelines & repeat to myself that the
“snowmobiler is really my friend” or else I wouldn't have these wonderful
trails to ski. No matter, nobody is here anyway as former University of
Utah coach Bernt Lund would have
remarked that the “wiener faced snowmobiliers” have all retired to their
golf courses and jet ski's by now. It's just me and a few stray random soles
out there now saying good bye to the snow that makes us so happy as we
comtemplate our respective lives toiling away at some day job smiling about
our winter experiences and having the vision to still get out there on an
early weekend morning ski and do a mental download on the fantastic event of
winter that we are priviledged to enjoy 4 months to sometimes 6 months a
year.
No wonder the Norse people prayed as pagan worshipers to the great Norse
gods, they were so right in recognizing where life originates and that is in
WINTER!
