There are few things I find more ironic than waxing poetic about the beauty of language. It's using words to describe how awesome words are. Fortunately I'm a fan of irony so that won't stop me from doing it.
A year or so ago my dad sent me a link to website full of great quote about climbing. I don't remember the link so I can't share it with you, but just know that there were pages and pages of quotes from all sorts of people. Everyone from John Muir to Joe Nobody climber had varying monetary values of quotes (Muir is probably worth more than two cents, let's be honest). Though I'm not a climber, I do aspire to one day be so and I appreciate the beauty of the sport, so most of the quotes did hit home. A lot of them weren't relegated strictly to the world of climbing, but more spoke to the broad world of action sports. Put together it was like the poem of the climbing community, reflecting the respect, love, and fear of the sport and the mountain. It was beautiful.
The other day I got bored (read: procrastinating lab work) and decided to look for ski quotes. Try your own Google search of it if you'd like, maybe you're better at it than I am; for me, however, Google had only a handful of crappy forum threads and small compilations on ski-related websites to give me. Of those very few quotes were strictly of skiing, and many were about mountaineering but got filed along with skiing quotes. Suffice it to say I was disappointed.
Why disappointed? Language is the best art form out there. Language is free, requiring no paints, oils, papers, or other supplies. Language is at once subjective and objective. Language is something everyone is capable of; I could never paint a masterpiece and my attempts at sketching are juvenile and amateurish at best. But we are all (saving a few neurological abnormalities) born with the capacity for learning and for speech. Because of this we are born with the capability to utilize language to its full artistic potential. So my disappointment stems from the paucity of prose concerning skiing while it is so easily done.
The mountains lend themselves to descriptive and elegant speech as well. I find nothing more full of poetry than nature and skiing. Writers like Thoreau and Muir felt likewise (as least about the nature part). It's a poetry than can be difficult to translate to words, to put on a page. It's more a combination of emotion, physical sensation, and perception. That's where the fun and the challenge come in; poetry is a very subjective art and as such lends itself perfectly to reflecting the skiing experience. No two people will experience a run in the same way, and I have yet to find two people who completely agree on the meaning of a poem. So why, I must continue asking, is there so little prose (as opposed to guide or technical books, of which there is a booming market) based around skiing?
Perhaps it's because we, the ski bum community, would rather sit around and bullshit or talk up our best days/lines/falls/hucks/etc. than sit and write something thoughtful. Those of you who caught the short about Andreas Fransson last year ("Tempting Fear"; you can find it in last season of Solomon's FreeskiTV) got a great look into the poetry of the mountain. Fransson keeps a journal, and he has a way with language that rivals his mountaineering ability. He exudes such passion in his words that it would take a hard person to not be moved by the power of the mountains and skiing over this man, to not see how one could love such things.
As skiers (and boarders) I believe most if not all of us want others to join us on the hill and love our sport as we do. It's easy to say "bro, give it a try, it's awesome," but how convincing is that? Want to get your friends or even complete strangers stoked to try something new (even if it's not a snowsport)? Use language. Instead of saying it's awesome, perhaps say that the elation one feels while gliding swiftly down a snow-covered slope, surrounded by the pines and aspens, is nothing short of euphoric, and the sensation is as close to flying a man can get while staying rooted to the earth. In my humble opinion that says a hell of a lot more than "awesome".
So here is my challenge to you: don't fear language, but embrace it, master it, and employ it in all you do. Do not fear sounding pompous or purposefully-intelligent; if language becomes a part of your life then people will learn to expect it from you and perhaps use it as well. The world can be a much more colorful place with the proper use of good language, and why should this not apply to the ski slopes and the mtb park. This doesn't mean you can't shout "bro!", but it means you can follow it up with "that was resplendent!"
Well I guess that might make you sound like a pompous douche. . . It's all about trial and error in the search for the steeper side. Just make sure to keep things colorful. . . brah.
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