ABOUT

What is The Soul of Skiing?

Let me ask you....

Why do we ski?
 
Is it the fresh air?
The exercise?
Being in nature?
The Challenge?
Sharing time and space with family and friends?
The Après Ski?
The travel?

We’ve all pondered those questions at one time or another, discussed them amongst ourselves (even to oneself), questioning what it is about skiing that attracts so many people, from every walk of life, combining us into a loose community of people who call ourselves skiers.

I’m Jer-Z… 
I’m an industry veteran, former(?) ski bum, classic underachiever and ne’er-do-well from a blue-collar family, who grew up in your typical, suburban, blue-collar town in Southern Connecticut.
 
-Now that we’ve cleared that up, I can hear my fellow New Englanders poo-pooing me because much of New England does not feel Connecticut is part of that union. Yet, as much as the rest of New England hates to admit it, Connecticut, while also part of the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, is an integral, and necessary, part of New England, and claims of Connecticut skiers being unable to ski rise entirely from myth and folklore.
 
-QUESTION: “Don’t myths and folklore have some basis in truth?”
-ANSWER: Quite frankly, yes. Before I moved to a major ski resort and truly learned to ski, I couldn’t buy a turn with a fistful of fifties. 
 But that’s a story for another time.

-QUESTION: “What’s this Jer-Z thing, didn’t you just say you’re from Connecticut….?”
-ANSWER: Anyone who has been in the ski industry long enough acquires a nick name. It’s rarely flattering, and often assigned as the result of something embarrassing. 

That said, telling the story of one’s nick name isn’t for public consumption. It’s more the fodder of tall tales, told around a fire with kindred spirits, beer in hand, who’ve earned one themselves, oft expounded upon with some lively embellishment and periods of unstoppable belly laughs- mostly at the expense of the one describing one’s own nick name. 
In short, one must earn the right to hear the story of another’s nick name.
 
...I digress.
The idea for The Soul of Skiing was borne of discussions around the mega-pass conglomerates gobbling up ski areas around North America… 

“Skiing is losing its soul” 
“The smaller, family resorts of yesteryear are fading into obscurity, driven out by modern, sterile, cookie cutter mega-resorts” 
“Skiing is pricing itself out of affordability for the non-elite”

These perceptions have flourished for decades in North America. Many of them are misconceptions, others, simple misunderstanding, and yet, some are based in truth.

The ski industry evolves in leaps and bounds. As humans, we abhor change.  While necessary, it's difficult for many of us to accommodate; we like our habits, our standards, our comfort zones. 
   With that in mind, I decided to create this online, somewhat interactive, storyboard- like a magazine you're a part of- to tie in a web of social media, hoping to reach as many people as possible, to help navigate the snowfields of the ski industry, and express our love for the sport.  Hopefully, dispelling some myths along the way, while expanding, light-heartedly, upon others. 

 My goal is to tie in the disjointed bits and pieces of truth and rumor, balanced with some fun storytelling, as a one-stop shop for people to relate, ask questions, find answers, and have a good time. Because, after all, skiing is about fun, and we, as ambassadors to that industry, can’t lose sight of that.

Too many online-sources cater to the skiing extremes- The stuff of legends New Englanders never experience on their home turf; the endless fields of deep powder; trips to Utah, Colorado, The Alps, Japan, New Zealand…. Places where big mountains, replete with 50 foot rocks to huck, and steep tree runs, are the fodder for dreams and expensive vacations.  Yet, we forget that the average skiers are families with kids, college students living off of a few bucks made waiting tables or mowing lawns in the summer, and business people looking for a weekend escape from the mundane firmament of the office- 
…And if you live in the east, that means spending your increasingly shorter winter at an over-crowded, high-priced ski area, waiting in lines to slide down icy, treacherous hills, on expensive equipment, while the majority of which occurs on mostly sunless, windy days.
 
For the unexperienced, that sounds bleak. Yet, for we who have been shot by cupids’ alpine arrow, we have come to live for those days, often merely tolerating our existence between them.  We’re all just regular people, joined by the common thread of snowsports, who have come to find that there’s something about skiing which enhances our souls.

This isn’t JUST about our ski heroes; The Michaela’s, the Plake’s, the Candide’s- it’s also about the Joe and Jane next door who find that skiing and snowboarding have, in some way, touched their soul.
-This is about us.

Welcome to The Soul of Skiing.

What’s in YOUR soul?