Cold Comfort
Ullr and Skaade: winter's "it" couple.
By MICHAEL ISRAELSON

Once asked what his favorite thrill of skiing was, my father surprised me with an answer more insightful than a man in the dead of winter might normally produce. "I just like the sound of my skis moving through the snow," he said, "of the wind in the trees..." A seemingly infallible corporate juggernaut rightfully full of piss and vinegar, my father was not one to shy away from the rigors of the economic environs. But he had long ago found his escape.

Even now I am startled and overjoyed that this man could not only grant insight into his own visions of all that was right in the winter world, but that he could instill in me the same respect and obsession for being on a pair of downhill-liberation sticks—the selfish delving into a world that exists only between an individual and the un-sound of the surrounding snow. But there is something more to the whisper of skis in fresh powder, the reason I return each winter with renewed vigor.

It wasn't until later in life that I learned of Ullr and Skaade, the two responsible for this ineffable equation. It was my Grandma who first clued me in to the coming of Ullr each September, when the sky burns so blue that it makes the trees cry away their leaves, when the first startling contrast of the autumn sky against the white of the high peaks blows free summer longings. With the cooling of the night air, feelings also begin to change. A mystic transformation occurs concomitant with the changing colors. A deep longing that is hard to pinpoint save that such a deep hole overfills twofold once snow finally blankets our winter hideouts. This respect of the mountains and their cold demeanor is the same respect that Ullr first saw in Skaade, and that their love reflects as the temperatures drop.

Found in the oldest of the Eddas writings in Norse mythology, Ullr was the god of winter, generally pictured on long wooden skis with large upturned tips. Skaade, the paired goddess, was both passionate and violent, a reflection of all that we know to be true of love. It was written that as winter deities, Ullr and Skaade would lovingly spread heavy winter snows to protect the Norse farms from the freezing north winds. Each spring Ullr and Skaade would return to the last, most remote corner of the country where snow still lingered. Here they would remain until the autumnal tides dictated their return.

Grandma would explain that love was a great and tumultuous emotion, not easily understood even when experienced. The truest true love known by mankind is echoed not by spring blooms, for they are only born to one day exfoliate and die. This is the eros love that burns violently one day, and then not at all, like a forest fire. So great is the love that protects, the love that is at once both cold and comforting; a love that does not die as the leaves fall, but that melts as does snow, recycling itself as the water that brings life to those around it. This is what is felt between Ullr and Skaade, says Grandma, and this is why the pair is so revered come September. The love encountered in snow and its pastimes is the most direct way to experience what Ullr and Skaade felt for each other.

It is the whispering that my father recognized long ago. It is said that as your life path follows the truest line, all that surrounds you falls into place. I have returned to the mountains that raised me after years away at school. Here above the Zero Creek drainage in the talus below Swede's Ridge is a hideout on top of the world, a location known to locals simply as "Boris," with a front-door view of the clawed west face of Parry Peak. On this September afternoon, life has again found its way as the blue sky is quickly obscured by at first one cloud, then the flurries of winter payload.

With ears piqued to the high alpine cirque behind me, I hear what sounds like an old couple waking from a long nap in one another's grasp. The voices that were passed on to my Grandma ages hence and then on to my father have now found me, caught up in the glorious forces of an early fall snowfall. I am conversing with Ullr once again, all without saying a word.


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