It was midday and the clouds loitered around the edges of the sky as if they were suspicious of the sun. Beams of light ricocheted off of goggles and snow and beads of sweat that were caught in my oldest brother's beard. The hike up was our way of earning our run. The hard work and constant determination to get what was important to us made the view and the ridge taste so much sweeter. Finally able to rest, I planted a granola bar in my mouth and squinted through a frame of icy eyelashes to see a sight I had seen before, every day for the past week, but still punched the air out of my lungs. The powder was up to my thighs and the snow lovingly seeped its way into my boots just to kiss my toes with painful numbing. I wiggled them to try tickling some sanity and warmth into them. I only hoped that my toenails wouldn't fall off, but they would inevitably be purple. I pulled up my balaclava to dodge the lunges of frostbite's ravenous teeth. Each nip of cold, the company of my brothers, the view, and the raw interaction with the mountain created a moment that reeked of a dream: a seemingly perfect balance between pain and pleasure.
The hype of the day kept us from settling our thoughts and quickly my siblings were bounding down the mountain on tele-skis, skis, snowboards, and giddiness. My mind was simultaneously crowded and opened by the superfluous love shared between myself and the people I shared this moment with, the people I look up to, the people who raised me. My four brothers' elated screams echoed off the mountain ranges that boxed-in the valley below. I joined their chorus of "Shred the Gnar!" and yodels, knowingly embracing the carefree and somewhat foolish mindset of Mother Nature's glee. My skis led the way and found fresh tracks. The lines of the songs that blasted into my ears were translated into the lines that I skied. The music shuffled from Wu-Tang Clan to the Tibetan Monks Of Gaden Sharste & Corciolli but the abrupt change of pace did not hinder my contentedness. I have gained a knack for happily going with the flow, knowing that what the universe hands me is often what I need. The peaceful bellowing of the monks allowed me to take a moment to appreciate that my life is this one on top of this mountain not limited by my economic state with this physically fit and capable body and this working mind. While just minutes before, the fearlessness of Wu-Tang's hip-hop allowed me to bring an angst and stoke for life into my current experience, while also finding the gangster within me. The random shuffling of songs only fed my innate addiction to change and let my enthusiasm multiply and blossom.
Although childish in our hearts and in our unpracticed aerials, we were not childish in our perspective. We had a shared mature understanding of the bigger picture. This was a vast understanding of the world that comes with being a small, overrated mammal sliding on some sticks down the biggest thing it could get its hands on. Each of us took our fair share of tumbles and we iced them each with cacophonous laughter that got muffled by mouthfuls of snow. To be atop a mountain, to go almost unnoticed by a mountain really teaches the skill of not taking things too seriously. In one instance, I grabbed some air and landed scattered into a disorganized pile of all my gear. But my commitment to the bettering of my skills, my world, and myself, let me rise from even my greatest wrecks and the most deadly of wreckage, not unscathed but changed and always for the better. With such a brutal fall, I gained the experience necessary for landing it next time...and the next time, I did.
After reaching the bottom, without hesitancy, we followed our spontaneous urges to pursue more. Every run I took and every moment spent on that mountain came from a drive to experience and learn. It was based off of my ceaseless search for something new...or for the rad or for the gnar or for swagger or for living a life that could inspire. The seed of this search was planted in me by my five older siblings who all held within their bellies a fire of the same breed. And we sewed that common thread together on ridge lines and in powdered fields where nature is in perfect harmony with man and my head is in perfect harmony with my heart...where my intelligence and ambition trust one another and I trust them because they have gotten me this far and I know they are not tired yet.
