A letter from the editor, The Ski Journal, Volume Thirteen, Issue Three, December 2019
These hairpin turns, this dense hardwood corridor, it all looks so familiar. It’s not much different than a lot of roads I’ve driven to other resorts, but I’m trying to stay aware of my surroundings.
The more time I spend on this road, the deeper my relationship with it grows. There’s the pullout where I changed the flat on my road bike, twice. And there’s the spot where I parked to hike for huckleberries last summer. Then the place the out-of-town state patroller likes to sit and the one where people tend to chain up after they don’t really need to chain up anymore. The hairpin with the yurt off to the side is an easy one to remember, and same with turn seven, where the trees open up and I’m greeted with an expansive view to the east of Lake Pend Oreille and the Cabinet Mountains—rumored to be one of the wildest stretches of land left in the lower forty-eight.
Mostly, I drive this road to get to the resort and ride the lifts. But the adage holds that the journey is the experience and the experience is the journey, if we allow ourselves to engage with the process. Sometimes that’s unavoidable due to winter driving conditions, and sometimes it’s easy to let your mind wander, but with each lap, I notice new nuances of this mostly quiet stretch of pavement.
The same thing could be said about the going getting tough and the tough pushing their own car out of the ditch while their underage child presses the gas pedal. Although my family and I have only been here for one winter, we’ve made this drive enough to begin to appreciate it more every time. I’m quite sure at the rate we’re going, with each passing season, we will find another memorable piece of pavement along the way. And when I’m in the passenger seat and this three-foot-tall, waddling hot chocolate fiend grows to be the one behind the wheel, I’ll really be in for a ride.
Yes, it’s just another road to the resort, not much different than many others in a lot of states across the American West. But it’s got its own personal magic, and it’s one I’m learning to love more with every winding ascent.
