My Sunday morning wake up call was the sound of birds outside my window. In one of the truest signs that spring had sprung, the singing invoked an optimism for the changing seasons. It’s funny how certain sensory triggers will spark your mood, or maybe it’s not. We are all creatures of habit I suppose and you’d have to be a real asshole to not feel good after waking up to little birds singing melodies pure and true. Someone wrote a song about it once, check it out. It’s a goodie.
In the account of the other day’s events I left out a significant detail so as not to muck up the tale with some Debbie Downer-esqe information. But early in the morning while people were still waking, I was ready to get active. The snow was still solid after a melt-freeze cycle from the previous day and night, so there were at least a couple hours before the riding would be more than a frustrating test of edge control. A quiver of snowskates sat outside the lodge, beckoning passerby’s with a siren call to try them. I took the bait and messed around on the gentle slope out front.
Why is it that you always hurt yourself doing the stupidest things? The day before I had scared myself sober on more than a few occasions on the steep gladed pitches we accessed in the cat. Even the zigzag course got hairy in some sections but my will to ride the fastest kept me focused. But a few turns in on the snowskate I lost the deck underneath my feet, and the rock-hard surface acted like sandpaper when I put my foot down. My foot stayed, the rest of my body went downhill, and my right MCL felt the all-too-familiar popping sensation. Sad face emoticon.
Yes, I had tweaked my knee, perhaps even torn it, although I have yet to find out the details. All I know is that the pain was enough to give me a limp, yet not completely severe as to I just sucked it up and did the Zigzag course and seven 2000-foot runs in the cat. But, as common sense would have it, by the end of the day my knee had swelled up a few sizes after pushing it well beyond its limit.
Down Day
As much as I iced the knee, turned down drink offers, and tried to rest as much as I could, the pain was enough where it would be foolish for me to get in the cat. So as everyone else got their things together and got amped to jump in, I grabbed one of the guitars, propped up my leg, and started to play.
There are many wise philosophers from west to east who claim that everything happens for a reason. While I’m not trying to downplay my stupidity for trying to snowskate down a bulletproof slope first thing in the morning, I do feel that in order to round out this trilogy of experience out at Baldface Lodge I needed to be there when time slowed down. Although the lodge is off-the-grid and out in pristine nature, there had been so much going on the entire time that I did not have any space to really sit back and take it in.
What a blessing. With all the guests in the cat and most staff having left earler for their time off, it was only myself and a handful of remaining employees at the facility for the day. Sometimes it can feel a bit haunting being in such a large place with so few people, but the sheer immensity of the surrounding nature overshadowed the inner space of the lodge. With large windows at every glance, the boundary between inside and out overlapped to where you could sip coffee or play the guitar on a plush leather couch while watching busy animals pass by outside, welcoming spring.
The sunshine gave me appreciation for the present moment, being able to have the space to take it all in without any agenda to maximise adrenaline out of the cat or the athletic drive to push yourself for a fast time. There is something about the quiet of the backcountry that is simply inaccessible wherever you may find a paved road or power line. As the wise Lao Tzu said, “Silence is a source of great strength.”
It has been a long winter. It has been full of amazing trips and new friendships as I traversed the west from Jackson Hole to Mt Baker, Tahoe last week, and now in British Columbia, my birthplace and home for the majority of my life. It has been a winter of great progress, both as a snowboarder and a writer, and particularly in the ability to combine the two. But amidst all the action, there has been very little time to sit back and relax. It’s funny how the things that you need in life will come to you if you recognize the signs.
Had I not had the day of peace and quiet out there I would have missed out on one of the area’s greatest assets: nothingness.
Sometimes you need to consciously excuse yourself from the group and take the time to disconnect from wi-fi, conversation, and even the adrenaline-fused stoke. And listen to the sound of silence. In doing so, things somehow start to organize in your mind, somewhat of a biological defrag operation to clear out the clutter. It doesn’t always need to be a whole day apart from the pack, but in my case that was what I needed, and a bum knee forced me to take the time that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred.
Finding Space
There were other ways to find this space too. On Saturday night the whole group of us found it in our dinner conversation. With 12 guys around the table we really let down our barriers. One of us opened up about his past as a drug addict, and the intense stories that accompanied the struggle to stay alive. Another talked about depression and how a chance conversation with a doctor became a solid life motivator: the cure for depression is passion and purpose. I then chimed in about my dreams to open up a camp for teens struggling with depression, offering a window to a life of wilderness adventure to be a means to conquer the illness. It worked for me and I would love to offer what I learned the hard way to help influence the next generation.
We then all agreed about the positive impacts of snowboarding, and how just being out here was such a blessing to the soul. The freedom to use your board as a paintbrush on a snow-covered canvas provides a whole body expression that gave all 12 of us unanimous agreement in its unquantifiable influence on our lives.
Baldface Lodge is a place that allows that expression to come out to its full potential. Sure you can find it other places, but the lodge and the Kootenays are something special. Anyone who values that expression needs to experience it to get a richer sense of snowboarding and for attaining that state of pure joy that comes from it.
It’s not by accident, either. Owner Jeff Pensiero has a vision, and over the past 2 decades that vision has materialized through hard work and passion. We had a good chat during that down session when the lodge was all quiet, and I saw how he did this for the right reasons. He is a great example of how the pursuit of excellence produces inarguable results. I can’t imagine the blood and sweat that went into building this operation, but the look of joy on Jeff’s face was enough for me to realize that he’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing in this life.
All Good Things…
As I sat outside on Sunday afternoon contemplating all this and more, I saw the group up at the Craig Kelly memorial start to make their way down the slope toward the lodge. There was a bit of envy as i watched the smiles on their faces come into focus. The envy was short lived, though, because as the commotion heated up as more arrived I quickly longed for those moments of silence.
As people got their gear organized for the trip out, we got word that the heli was on its way to pick us up. For the first time all weekend, we were being rushed. The staff quickly shuttled the bags out the door to the landing pad. Once we realized what was happening everyone tried to say the quick goodbyes to new friends, but even that took too long. Before I even knew it I was in the helicopter taking off, and the lodge disappeared out of sight. The snow soon disappeared and we were approaching the Nelson airport over Kootenay Lake. In less than five minutes after leaving the lodge we were on the ground and the trip was over.
The experience left an impression that I know will take some time to fully digest. Sure, some can trivialize a weekend at an opulent lodge to some first-world, spoiled kid’s rationalization for significance. But those people probably haven’t been somewhere like that and don’t know the intrinsic value that the backcountry has to repair the soul. There are certainly cheaper ways to access the backcountry, but I am yet to find somewhere else that allows for such space for pure expression like it does here. Sometimes you’ve gotta treat yourself, or make a goal to save for something, and then the experience becomes that much more fulfilling. The silence is glorious.
See Baldface.net for more info.
