It’s been said that it’s impossible to have a bad day on the golf course.  In fact, if you’re playing golf on a week day, it’s inevitable that one of your partners will announce, usually after he hits a snap hook into the bushes on the third hole, that even if he shoots 110 it “beats working”.  This is usually true, especially if you have any kind of a job that involves completing reports or participating in conference calls, but I’d challenge the overall assertion on the basis that in golf it’s also possible to get stuck with a 16-handicap who starts offering swing advice on the second tee, which is when, if I haven't already been thinking about it, I remember I'd rather be on skis. 

For those of us who love skiing, God made cold, wind, wetness, and chapped lips, which keeps most of the country off the slopes, and inside of shopping malls, and in Florida; the things God made for them. When I was a kid some people didn’t get into skiing because they were too busy playing youth basketball.  The trouble with youth basketball, and the reason I’ll encourage my children to do anything but play it, is that more than any other sport, it is coached by the father who, despite being short and never playing basketball beyond high school, thinks he’s Red Auerbach and regards his son, naturally, as the next Paul Pierce.  It’s axiomatic that American fathers who coach soccer don’t know anything about the game because even people who play professional soccer in this country don’t really know anything about it, which is why if you’ve ever watched youth soccer, all of the children chase the ball around in a big pile while the goalie walks off the field to get a juice box from his mother, but at least in youth soccer, most of the children appear to have fun because nobody is teaching them the "triangle offense".

There is a time and a place for organized athletics, but in a world where yuppie parents think their children are smarter than ever before, shove them in a thousand goddamn activities and expect them to play the violin, it’s important to give kids a release at an activity where their greatness is limited only by their imagination and lack of fear at the prospect of slamming into various objects and where even if they suck, they’ll still be better skiers than most everyone from Connecticut.

For the last ten years or so the only type of skiing I do is deep in the woods, as far away from the trails as possible.  There are basically two rules of this so-called "backcountry sking".  The first, if you’re me, is to refer to it as "backcountry skiing" as seldom as possible, because it makes you sound like some kind of investment banker who thinks he’s good at skiing because he drives an Audi, and has sent his children to a boarding school/ski academy which he believes will give them a "good chance" of being in the next Olympics which will require them to blow each and every weekend scraping their way down boring trails, trying to beat other eventual Williams college students down the hill by hundredths of seconds.   The second rule is never to ski alone, which is a rule I follow religiously, unless I can’t find anyone to go with me.

This weekend I broke rule number two because my usual ski buddy had flaked and I was unwilling to share my maiden voyage down my favorite chute with a flatlander who I cut loose after he made it clear that he was serial violator of rule number one, when he used the word “stoked” more than once during the five minutes or so we shared on the lift discussing his backcountry exploits.

Because there was very little snow, my journey was more arduous and dangerous than it would have otherwise been and because there was no base in the woods, I eventually experienced a double heel ejection when my skis went beneath a log obscured by the thin layer of powder and catapulted me several body lengths through the trees.  After I clawed my way 50 feet back up the hill to locate my skis I noticed a large moose standing a few feet away and glancing casually in my direction. We didn’t speak but I’m certain he wasn’t mad that I’d interrupted his nap and was just happy I hadn’t brought along my pal from the lift who’d have surely been “stoked” in his presence.

Some people, such as my wife, think it was stupid for me to travel miles into the woods without anyone knowing I was there and without any means of communication.  I’m inclined to agree, and to abide by the rules going forward.  Even if I have to stay on the trails my day will always be great, because there’s no such thing as a bad day on skis; even if the snow sucks I’ll bite my tongue, and be happy I’m not doing layup drills, or in one of God’s shopping malls.