Mark Detsky

Quite the opposite. It’s apparently bad news to be so much as ‘woke’.

On May 21, 2021, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill to allow public schools to offer yoga, ending an approximate 30 year ban. This ban had been very successful in preventing the growth of Hinduism in Birmingham. One could wonder whether this was a canary of enlightenment arriving in the deep south, but, as you are aware, there is much worse stuff going on. There’s the kind of stuff that, growing up, I assumed could not be done (anymore). Jim Crow laws targeting black voters. The duping of tens of millions of Americans not to get vaccinated as an act of politics, while watching deaths remain elevated only around them. The acts of human and economic sabotage in the face of climate change. These folks are listening to strong voices, permeating somewhere around half of America. Without repercussion, rather with reward.

One constant thread in my mind since November 5, 2016 has been the triumph of evil. Evil wins. Is it innate in humans as a collective? Or is evil’s appeal to fear the baseline human response, and the easiest to leverage. Until I witnessed the Trump presidency, I had not seen its full power and persistence. Trump showed me that, like the dark side, evil is equal parts of fear and narcissism. And now it’s clear to me that it’s all just low-hanging fruit, and often times can overpower empathy and hope. Rather than a gate, these emotions ebb and flow in society, gaining strength and waning.

And there are always those who will profit without remorse. For every miracle vaccine, there will be leaders that scream to refuse it, grabbing power with a message, any message. Those type of peddlers are constantly renewed in society. At best, they may undergo dormant periods, but they rise like a wall of 17-year cicadas to press any new advantage, any new fissure of fear. And today they can sell ads.

In the United States of 2021, tribe trumps education, up can be down, scientists are trolls and a parade of two-bit charlatans whose only qualification is the pursuit of power succeed in getting everyday Americans to ignore their hands in front of their faces. As the failed Instagram insurrection increasingly turns into a gaslit republican campaign message controlled by the most narcissistic person in history – one with a better than even chance of winning, to me there is one inescapable truth – it was always thus.

History is marked by the stories of leaders. From the time of the creation of annals, the annals are littered with mostly narcissistic zealots subjugating the populous, in nearly all cases supporting the goal to attain power as an end in and of itself. Those types of rulers are not only still around today, they are thriving. It can only be human nature that these types of rulers will never. stop. coming. And how easily is the mob swayed? They are swayed even if you tell them you are swaying them and make a caricature of their political beliefs. The ones we call great either won wars, built projects, or both.

And so, as a corollary, the great awakening of the population is also not coming. If any thoughts of my youth could be considered foolish, maybe top of the list was the idea that humanity was to experience a breakthrough of peaceful warriors. Even when President Obama was elected, there was this sentiment that the country had seen the light, that we were shedding the old racists by attrition and now were going to tackle real problems. Obviously, that never came. The next generation of racists just carried the torch, literally.

Obama said that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. This phrase epitomizes his worldview. I like to think it’s just as correct that human nature is intrinsically kind. And it is true that the arc of kindness and grace in humanity is just as a persistent trend. Humans have been slowly lifting their standard of living, and treating each other better in general, since the beginning of time. It may look more like an EKG reading than a stock chart, however. We leave a lot of folks behind, absolutely, but the trend line is still there in the average standard of living across the globe.

I say this because I have a theory, and it may be a well known economic theory for all I know, that the economic growth of humanity is due to our invention of government. Where government creates a stable environment for wealth transfer, even in times of war, there is prosperity. Only the government can invest enough money to move an economy of a country, and the success of markets are rooted in the efficacy of the government that oversees them. When the government falls, the economy falls with it.

Tying this back to tyrants and history, I also think that it was always thus. Governments through time have created wealth by spending on infrastructure – whether temples to fallen rulers, Mayan ball fields, Nile River boats, ports, or railroads, aqueducts, or mines. If the government didn’t cause them to be built, they were not built and history has not heard of them. Sure there would be trade, but prosperity cares not if the government is a Samurai Daimyo, a Roman legion, or the American legion building the roads. So long as the roads get built, they shall be the leaders.

Which brings me to Joe Biden, his stimulus presidency and the prospect of one more major bill investing in all kinds of American projects under the name of infrastructure. The utility of this bill to the overall betterment of society is undeniable. It should be done; it should get votes; and should introduce a new age of prosperity. It’s obstacle is only the quest for power and money, and its shared home of the republican party.

The achievement of global wisdom, where all people recognize the Earth as our mother and achieve peace and end poverty and disease – it ain’t happening. The forces of fear and hate will not die off, they will teach it to their children, and their numbers will always be there, following new leaders who revel in it. And so the next generations will not rise to a position of new understanding, they will engage in meme-wars with the generations prior. But while the gilded age of humanity will never arrive, each generation will live better so long as the bottom does not drop out (an open question I grant you). The lesson of history is not in nuance. The democrats should pass their infrastructure bill, because history is written by the builders. The arc of humanity is toward peace; though Alabama is committing crimes of humanity I thought were long gone, they did un-ban yoga. So that’s nice.

In December I had my first powder day of the 2020 – 2021 season. It was a weekday, I was solo per usual. I was amazed with the grip that that powder day feeling still has over me, some 20 ski seasons in. Assuming an average 30 days/season (almost, I skied more than that pre-kids and less post), that’s 600 ski days. While not nearly enough (!) of those are powder days, I estimate a good 30 percent of them involved powder, so 200 days.

This time that powder day feeling started early in the week. I felt the butterflies jump in me upon seeing that Joel’s Open Snow forecast showed a storm approaching. I scrutinized my calendar and entered “hold” through 2 pm on Wednesday. My charge then became to protect Wednesday from life’s weekly task onslaught. I also made a sweep of Open Snow, snow-forecast, Seth’s Weather Report, CAIC, and a baseline of the national weather service to triangulate my Wednesday. Was that the right day? Would I be able to reserve a day (a new twist this year yay!)? Which ski area would get the most snow? These are not trivial considerations, but metaphysical dilemmas. I received the “I guess” eyeroll that suggested … hall pass!

The season had started off well in November but fizzled. A family trip was set for the weekend. I was irritable, lost in social media posts of one elegant turn or another. In short, I had powder fever.

Wednesday morning arrived. Winter Park’s cam showed only four inches. Joel wrote the storm was ending, but noted it was still snowing as of the writing of his report. Winter Park had enjoyed consistent snow for several days. This is often a recipe for a sneaky powder day, but it was risky especially early in the season. I queasily decided to go; because it takes a good deal of motivation to break the weekday pattern. Given the added cabin fever of the pandemic, just getting out of the house a motivator, because a bad day skiing is better than a good day working.

I hit the road after dropping Leo off at school. It was a bright morning, and then I hit construction traffic in Idaho Springs. Work emails started piling up as I sat still, some that had to be answered. My window was growing smaller and the down time in the car was making me question my decision. There’s a very thin ratio between ski time and drive time on a weekday ski even on the best days.

The first flakes flew by as I drove past Empire. That was a good sign – to have precipitation falling on the east side means the storm was hitting the mountains on the west side. As I drove up the pass, the snowpacked road started to ease my mood and raise my antennae that it had, in fact, continued to snow. By the time I turned into the lot it was a snowstorm, the anxiousness in my stomach had molted, and the excitement had me moving fast as I geared up. I was late, but I saw smiling locals heading back to work – another good sign.

I kept my emotions in check as I carried my gear to the hill. The line on the gondola was reasonable given the COVID-19 restrictions. As I was lifted uphill, I scanned the early season conditions and considered my options for the ideal first run based on my internal algorithm of total skiers, runs open, active snowfall, cross-referenced with past conditions.

Based on this hyper analysis, I decided to head to the front face of the Winter Park side. As I schussed over to the first run, I noticed snowfall on the side of the path. I pushed forward into the downhill, immediately sizing up the state of the snow, how much it had been skied, and when.

It was good. There were pockets of three to five turns of untracked snow. There were icy conditions in the middle where the snow was skied off. With years of power based radar, I took non-intuitive fall lines and cut a wide path. The soft snow allowed me to easily traverse the terrain. I found a pocket, about ten turns of soft snow, with small unbroken patches.

I headed into the trees. And there was a white carpet. Window after window of untracked lines. I stopped at the top of one that looked good. I took off my goggles and let out a deep, smiling breath. The breath of relief. The breath of being in the right place at the right time. The breath of connection to all the smiles and giddiness of power days past. To have made the right call starting in the days before the storm, the uneasy forecast of the morning. The flakes on the way up the past, the parking lot and the people already leaving(!), presumably having skied the best snow.

In one instant, it all washed over me like an easy surf. I had made it to the moment. I strapped everything back in and turned into the snow, cutting through the new snow and floating on top with quick but effortless turns in the tree tunnel. I popped out onto the soft run at the bottom and cut longer, straighter turns that are only allowed when the snow provides resistance. I was going faster than my muscles could handle, guiding my skis rather than pushing them. It was that powder feeling.

And then I was back uphill, searching pockets from the lift and noting features where I saw untracked turns. Each time I hit a line was a success, landing a big fish, a release into a place where you are the only one in the world. It mostly happens with untracked snow, though even soft broken up snow can provide the friction to make you glide down a slope.

It is amazing to me how strong this anticipation is, how cathartic the turns, twenty plus years into my ski career. The attraction to this feeling, like a surfer in a big set, like a guitarist mid-solo, is remarkable in its hold on me. It’s a feeling I’ve known for 23 years, since I moved to Colorado. The feeling traces to before then, though. It’s a feeling I’ve known since I went sledding through the steeps and trees of my neighborhood growing up, into the night with the lights above the garage doors providing our night sledding. It is a connection to a place deep within me, a through-line of excitement past the broken down relics of life along the road to create an umbilical cord to your prior self.

There remains nothing like that feeling of ducking into some trees, squeezing in a tight spot and bursting into a meadow with a blank canvas of deep snow. That powder day feeling keeps you young because it is so fresh and so fleeting in itself. Also, it taps into that axiom of joy stretching from all the powder days I’ve had to date and that buzz of excitement that has somehow managed to last a lifetime. Those days have an element of one part exploration, one part flow, one part ease, and one part full exertion. The reward is paid in breathless smiles. Not to mention, the feeling of peace as you drive down the mountain, and the blue sky starts to peek through the leading edge of the storm.

I should start off by saying that this post may be completely premature. But, the other day while slogging up the tall aspen and broad cow parsnip of the Snodgrass Trail, I was thinking that I’d like to see a Venn diagram of US passport holders and persons taking COVID-19 precautions seriously (versus not believing or caring). My hypothesis being that citizens of the world understand how people are all connected. And citizens of the world become so only by traveling.

Travel has always been expensive in either time or money. Generations behind modern travel had neither time nor money. People emigrated, expanded territory, retreated from war or famine, but travel for travel’s sake must have been rare. While there is an innate human drive to explore, exploration has presented real hardship for most of humanity. My grandparents, children of immigrants or immigrants themselves, didn’t travel to speak of. The world was at war for most of the first half of the last century. My parents made it to a few countries in the 1970s, but until the mid 1970s, southeast Asia was a land of war. Around 1990, the time I was entering high school, plane travel, once expensive and reserved for the wealthy, had long since opened up to the masses. There were notable exceptions, but in general there was a downward trend in war, the fall of the Soviet Block, and the reemergence of a number of countries.

I selected 1985 to start the global travel window, but it could be earlier. During this global travel period of 1985 – 2020, all manner of (mostly white) people could travel the world at will, cruise the Danube, safari in Africa or the Amazon jungle, dive in Palau. Hell, you could do that all in a few weeks, with infrastructure and eager businesses to greet you. Americans, Canadians, Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, the countries of the Commonwealth took advantage of this openness with the buying power of their currency. In addition, I’d posit that those of us who came of age during this time got the glory of the whole window of easy and cheap travel the world had not before known. I am talking about Generation X, the best generation ever it may turn out, for the chance to travel the world.

Generation X’s refers to those born between 1965 – 1980, famously between the hype of the Baby Boomers and the Millennials. The travel window began as early as 1971, when the Eurrail program that had began in the 1960s offered the “student pass”. Study abroad programs at colleges had fallen in popularity in the 1970s and 1980’s, but were back up to speed in the 1990s. Ryan Air debuted as a Southwest-type low cost carrier starting around 1990, and expanded in the 2000s. Starting in the early 2000s, airline and hotel rewards credit cards fueled many of my trips. The first editions of “Let’s Go” Europe -published in 1980, and Lonely Planet – 1974, were but pamphlets that blossomed by the 1990s into user-friendly bibles that offered confident access. In the 1990s, these books that seemed to be institutions to me were actually just getting their groove on.

I studied abroad in London and traveled the continent on rails in 1996, right on the upward trend. In 1996, the Eurrail 10-punch pass was filled in by the rider, with a check written, yes written, in pen. So, with the top secret technology of an erasable pen, our 10-punch Eurrail pass became – unlimited! We still wrote down phone numbers and exchanged letters, though we now had our first email addresses.

Back from my Europe experience and throughout my 20’s and 30’s living in Colorado, the world was open. I traveled across the Pacific to New Zealand, with a free two week layover in Fiji, to Guatemala, and the Far East. With guidebooks in tow, places like Thailand, then Laos, had become traveler havens. Even people from countries with lower currency values could find affordability in places like Thailand, where you’d also find people whose countries include a “gap year” making their way across beach towns in the South Pacific.

In the mid-oughts the internet expanded the map. As every last place was posted, every last place was discovered. When my wife and I traveled South America in 2008-2009, guidebooks had already become less relevant. No longer were hostels booked once you arrived in town. Reservations were online, cell phones were nearly but not yet ubiquitous. Everyone was everywhere. Places that were once expeditions now had daily bus and air service, like Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. By the time we got to Costa Rica, our most recent travels, it felt like the 51st state. Every hotel and restaurant worth its salt knows about its TripAdvisor rating. Ex-pats now live comfortably throughout Central America, tied to the US by the web. Jetting around Europe, which I have admittedly not done since 1996, apparently became easier by cheap flight than traveling by rail.

My experience has been that traveling has gotten ever more crowded and widespread, and that was before the advent of “influencers”. I’ve always felt like I’m riding the wave trying to stay somewhere between “found” and “overrun”. The best experiences are usually where you base out of somewhere found and find someplace less overrun. The gems today are those that are not the gems everyone now goes to see.

COVID-19 brought a screeching halt to global travel. As I write this blog, Americans are banned from 90% of the world, the ultimate comment on our narcissism. Study abroad is cancelled. Airplanes are empty and low cost carriers are going belly up. The people living in the tourist towns of the world are staring down poverty. The question is whether that window of openness of the world has narrowed, if not closed.

If the downside to traveling before COVID-19 had become overrun areas that were once the gems of the world, the upside to that movement of people to the gems elevated their beauty to an economic boon to areas that, without tourism, would be prey to the extractive industries. Now that the tourist dollars are not coming in, won’t the foxes realize they have a window to exploit? How many more forests would be razed without tourists feeding the border towns to national parks in the Philippines, Indonesia, Peru?

While I was thinking about how for the first time in my life the world had closed its doors to America, an Economist article I read asked what if COVID-19 is not a blip? What if aviation can not come back? The world, Americans in particular, are experiencing a prolonged lapse in travel. This makes me wonder, what if this brief period in history from 1985 – 2020 will have been an anomaly? A period between major wars and disease, of relative economic prosperity, where large carbon footprints allowed unprecedented access to the world. A time when travel made any part of the globe a matter of booking reservations online, when air travel was not just allowed, it was cheap and plentiful? A time when protection of ecosystems was paid for with the promise of traveler dollars.

What if 2020 is the high water mark for the freedom to roam? It’s a mixed bag. Traveling is not environmentally friendly in its own right by any stretch. Grounded planes and arrested transportation cleared the air over much of the world. But it did provide an answer to many communities that needed an alternative to extraction. I suspect travel will return, but by degree and not without making the airport an even worse place to be. If there are less people traveling will there be less citizens of the world? This thought could be paranoia in hindsight when the world learns how to deal with COVID-19, but there is a plausible concept that we are now on a different path. Either way, it was a good run.

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