Skiing is at its most enchanting, in my opinion, when it happens in glades. I obsessively seek out runs that are wide open, yet still well-populated with spruce and generously filled out with bumps. Making buoyant turns around trees — their soft outer branches defining your line, then brushing you comfortingly as you pass — is the best way to spend time in the snow. And obviously, when that snow is dry powder, wafting up from your skis in gentle bursts, even better. I live for that feeling. But I never dream about skiing glades.
I dream about skiing more than I dream about anything. It’s been happening since I was a teenager. At some point, I realized I have to heed the urgings of my subconscious and indulge my obvious obsession, or I will go crazy. As a kid without easy access to the mountains, that meant getting creative. So, I watched MSP movies, subscribed to ski magazines, and drove to Oshman’s Sporting Goods to collect the free resort catalogues from the skiing department. I read Breakthrough on the New Skis by Lito Tejada-Flores, practiced plyometrics, and generally did everything I could to place myself in the ski world’s orbit — then I dreamt about skiing even more.
The dreams are a year-round phenomenon, though they crop up most frequently in late summer. By August, my Instagram feed is an elongated white cloud of anticipatory snow shots, I’ve watched Aspen Extreme for the 200th time, and I’m dreaming about skiing almost nightly. By the fall, I’ve ventured out to that season’s TGR and/or Warren Miller premiere, tuned my skis, and made my plans for the season — and the bizarre ski dreams have begun haunting me with the power of a dead criminal with unfinished business.
As I’ve been able to spend more time in the mountains, the dreams have only become more frequent and, generally, more frustrating.
Even in the fun ski dreams something weird happens. I’m skiing on ice skates, or nothing at all, somehow. My gear is usually bad. A lot of times I’m at a nearly defunct mountain I’ve never even heard of, where the snow is super shitty. I’ve skied in mud multiple times. Once, I skied straight into a library. I’m never able to get into my boots easily, and when I do, the lifts stop spinning. It’s the skiing equivalent of not being able to run (we’ve all had that one) but way more irritating.
I suspect I’m not the only person who has what might accurately be called ski nightmares, ones that get worse the longer you wait to clip in and make your first turns of the year. Or maybe I’m just that weird, I don’t know. What I do know is, even at an icy, crowded Killington, my first run of this season erased an entire year’s worth of annoying ski dreams. If I can experience the ethereal feeling of floating over a knuckle, then immediately connecting a series of carving turns, setting my edges down on a trail — at a ski area, in a state — I’ve never before explored, do I honestly need to have good ski dreams?
I can deal with bad ski dreams because I know, at some point this season, I’m going to find a powder stash in a semi-open glade. Tree groves will animate, ushering me through their negative spaces; snow will fall upward, exploding softly; and my skis will drift through moguls, like Viking ships navigating fjords. Nothing is more wonderfully dreamlike than that.