Photo:
Grant Gunderson

See also Contest 01: Chairlift Encounter

See also Contest 02: Panic

See also Contest 03: Squalor

See also Contest 04:
Fall

See also Contest 05: Weather, or Not?

A Hushed Yet Plaintive Call to Action
By MARTIN CHARTRAND

Somewhere among the tangled foothills of New England, night comes on biting and clear, blackening the background of the icy firmament. Through the intermittent revelation of lightposts illuminating patches of crunchy hardpack, and with blaring snowguns howling in his ears, a boy of sixteen or so digs the tips of his boots into the gravel-textured snow on the short pitch next to a kicker, his muscles assaulted by the single-digit temperature and the endless deep fatigue of hours of hiking, jumping; hiking, jumping.

At the humped top of the in-run he drops his skis and poles and rests for a moment, balling his fingers in the palms of his gloves to rub feeling back into them. Other young and messy-haired devotees of the simple yet divine act of skiing gather loosely around him, some sitting silently, some conversing in the raw, poetic language of youth, a few standing and readying themselves for another drop. A chorus of winces and sympathetic "Shiiii-iiiiiiit!"s echo around the group as each jumper slams his thin frame on the flat.

The scene occurs nearly every night. The same brightened faces and beaten twin-tips appear outside the lodge to ride the same creaky t-bar and ski the same 500 vertical feet of ice and granular. Or they skip the t-bar and session the same hand-built kicker until the lights turn off and they are coerced into going home. Some might question why they would spend their free hours at such a cold, monotonous pursuit. Is it to escape the bleary tedium of endless high school days? To escape the immutable sadness of rotting milltowns covered in ice? The eternal malaise of youth? A thousand answers might be found. But to those standing on the mound above the kicker watching the twinkle of tenement lights across the valley, no question is present and no answer is necessary. Skiing is its own reason and explanation, its own glorious interpretation of life's nonsensical drone.

"What time is it?" he says to his friend.

"Almost 7. Wanna try to go up once more?"

"I thought it was earlier. Definitely."

The grizzled liftie lines up one last T for the two determined boys before pulling the rope and closed sign across the loading area. It's too cold for words, but as his skis glide from pitch black into halogen illumination and back into blackness, the young skier envisions for a moment his entire life spread out like endless plains of school and homework and jobs and girlfriends, all of it blanketed with the same meaningless triviality. He wishes it would tremble and erupt into mountains.

"Do you realize that nothing really matters, man?"

His friend just stares and says, "Let's go, it's fucking cold."

"Maybe we should just leave this town. Head out west to some real mountains."

"Where would we get the money?"

"It doesn't matter. It's just like jumping. Either you go for it and it works out perfectly, or you hesitate and end up splayed and broken in the middle of the flat."

They ski down wordlessly, the lights flickering out one by one as they go, until they can no longer see the ground falling away below them.

                                                                                        Next: number 3


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