R.I.P. #TWSNOW
Nothing lasts forever. R.I.P. TWSNOW. It was the world’s largest snowboard magazine. It was my first job out of college. It’s where I learned about snowboarders like me all over the world. It’s where I learned to write about what I loved. Read More>
Nothing lasts forever. R.I.P. TWSNOW. It was the world’s largest snowboard magazine. It was my first job out of college. It’s where I learned about snowboarders like me all over the world. It’s where I learned to write about what I loved.
Transworld Snowboarding was bought by American Media—the company who owns the National Enquirer—who suddenly shut the mag down. There were so many rad tributes on all the feeds, a great outpouring of stories and memories and love. It’s very bittersweet because because because …
Because it wasn’t on our terms, but rather those of a mega-corp.
Because snowboarding is business to them, but it’s a sacred rite, culture and lifestyle to us.
Because print doesn’t make money anymore.
Because even though we were sad to see it go, none of us actually had a subscription to Transworld anymore.
Because we expect our media and inspiration and expression to be free.
Because it’s all there on the internet.
A conundrum. But the world is ever-changing. What’s the new model? What’s next? What kind of rad, unexpected grass-roots creativity will spring forth in the vacuum of TWSNOW? I can’t wait to see.
I was at Transworld for a decade. The longer I was there, the less I cared about the competitive aspect of snowboarding, and the more I cared about its power to connect you to cultures all over the world. I traveled, and wrote about it. India, Russia, Japan, Canada, Finland, Kyrgyzstan, Europe. I went, met the people, rode the powder. Shred tourism was and is my thing.
So, here’s a story I wrote about Mt. Baker—before I ever even lived in the Northwest. This piece was written before Instagram. I haven’t been to Baker in many years. Maybe it’s different now? But I like to think it’ll always kinda be this way …
WINTER PASSING
Three weeks of seasonal dumpage at Washington’s most legendary resort—Mt. Baker.
It’s fast approaching 10:00 p.m. on the streets (or rather street) of Glacier, the tiny town at the base of Mt. Baker, deep in the Northern Washington woods. Two tire marks make black stripes in a few inches of fresh snow accumulated on the road since the plow last came through, and the sky is the kind of dark that only exists in the middle of nowhere. Your cell phone has no service. You’d like to meet up with some familiar faces, and so you venture to Graham’s, one of two buildings with the lights still on. As you push through the door, the smoke from the fireplace stings your eyes, and some flannel-wearing locals playing pool look you up and down. One of them may or may not be Mike Ranquet. The bar tender comes over and asks you, “Wuht’ll eht be?” The beer tastes good. Everything has a real solidness to it and seems nourishing somehow. It’s the raw, pure living of the mountains. You have entered the world of Mt. Baker.
As a resort, Mt. Baker is defined as much by what it isn’t as what it is. As the closest Washington resort to the Canadian border, with the nearest “city” being the college town of Bellingham over an hour away, Baker is a little too remote to attract a giant clogging mess of tourists. The absence of any slopeside hotels or other traditional “resort amenities” probably helps this cause. And as far as snowboarding goes, the mountain has fostered more of a tight-knit family than an overblown scene. “There’s a sense of community but no real scene,” says longtime local Pat McCarthy. “Everyone knows everyone, and it feels like a big family. You’ll hit a cliff under the lift and hear the hoots but not have time to stop and see who it is.”
The warm family vibe is accented to by a rough, aggressive edge, though. The challenging nature of the terrain and the rugged flavor of remote mountain living requires a dedication to the institution of snow and a real hunger to ride things fast, big, and dangerous. They didn’t call ’em the Mt. Baker Hard Cores for nothing, you know. Like McCarthy says, “When there’s eighteen inches of new, you better be out the door by 6:00 a.m. if your planning on getting yours.”
And the “getting” of what’s “yours” at Mt. Baker is truly the stuff of legend—feeling the earth fall away from you bombing the treeless curve of Hemispheres; hiking the Shuksan Arm for a multi-faceted run of backcountry perfection that includes steeps, trees, and pillows; getting cliffed-out in bounds on your very first run of the morning and having to man up and just drop that son of a bitch; and the snow, the snow, the snow. Riding through a real Mt. Baker blizzard is a thing all its own. “When you’re up there and it’s snowing that hard you feel like your in a different world,” says Baker warrior Mark Landvik. “You can hardly see what’s ahead of you unless it’s a tree, the wind is going off, everyone is hiding underneath their layers trying to stay warm …”
There’s not much more to say about the experience of riding this place beyond this: “Snowboarding all day by yourself in the powder. Randomly bumping into friends and sharing the day’s experiences. Riding every run you’ve been dying to hit up all season until your back leg feels so dead that all you can do is head for the lodge and some salmon bread bowls … it feels good just saying it,” sighs McCarthy. It feels good hearing it, too. Really, if you’ve tapped into the essence of Mt. Baker at least once in your life, then, my friends, you have lived.
Being Careful
In the Northwest, you have to be careful this time of year. We combat the darkness, which is hard work. It wears you down. Your face grows pale. Read More>
In the Northwest, you have to be careful this time of year. We combat the darkness, which is hard work. It wears you down. Your face grows pale.
On the weekend, there is a real danger of starting the day out fine, sleeping in and eating a lunch of hot spinach toast, finishing a sewing project and feeling very fucking accomplished — and then POW, you plummet face first into a chasm of winter blues. It happened to me, and it can happen to you. What I did was act immediately. I got on my bike and rode speedily through the cold streets while my fingers froze, and then I huffed and puffed up to the summit of Mt. Tabor. The fun kicked in. The endorphins dripped. The views replenished. Sadness is just another kind of restlessness, and that is why when I get sad, I go outside into the winter world and exercise myself til exhaustion. It’s all I’ve ever known how to do.
Sunday night, I watched the new rock doc about Joan Jett. While I’ve long supposed Kim Gordon to be my punk-rock hero, now I’m not so sure. Perhaps it’s Joan — who rocks out with a raw power, who drips cool and never gives any shits, who defies living life according to expectations of a larger society.
A Winter Toast
So much great stuff happened this winter, and I forgot it all. Read More>
So much great stuff happened this winter, and I forgot it all. But let me think. There was a lot of walking, and driving. Fires against the cold. Twinkle lights against the darkness. Scenes where the snow blew vapor over the road and froze the pavement into a sheet of ice. Traveling around with my man and dog was my one and only true wish come true.
Fun fact: On New Year’s Eve Eve Mark and Jedda and I slept over in the 8 X 12” shed we (he) built on a plot of land in central Oregon. Outside it was 19 degrees. The trees creaked and grew. It was my first overnighter in the shedquarters, and without being glamorous, it was cozy beyond all reasonable belief.
I had brought DVDs and a laptop so we could cruise through some oldtimey movies, but my work laptop doesn’t have a disc drive? First world problems. It was a blessing, however. Because instead of gazing at the screen’s glow, we gathered around and listened to the Moth Radio hour. Drank camp-cups of wine. Stared into the propane heater it like it was a bonfire. To one of those Moth stories, I may have even cried. And throughout it all, I crept outside into the killer cold many times in order to pee, which is always my favorite opportunity to look up at the stars.
Been reading: Warlight by Michael Ondjaate. I love inhaling his enigmatic stories about love and family set stylishly amidst WWII.
Been listening: The new Eric Bachman, the new Sharon Van Etten, the new Jeff Tweedy.
Been watching: Russian Doll, on Netflix. I’m only 3 episodes in. I don’t know what it’s about. It’s feeling a little pop-culture existential to me.
Barbarian Days: My Midlife Standing Sideways
That vacation went quickly. I abandoned my brain. I laid in bed til late. I cleaned. I walked. I read. What I read was: Barbarian Days, A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. Read More>
That vacation went quickly. I abandoned my brain. I laid in bed til late. I cleaned. I walked. I read.
What I read was: Barbarian Days, A Surfing Life by William Finnegan.
It starts with a tale of surf hobo hooliganism. Malibu in the 60s. Hawaii in the 70s. Samoa. Fiji. Turkey. Apartheid-era Capetown. I learned the origin story of Tavarua—a name I heard whispered like a mythic ghost through the hallways of Transworld when I worked there.
But I was more interested in the latter half of the book. That's where Finnegan brings us up to present, and the term "Surfing Life" takes on its full meaning. It was the most accurate, eloquent description of what it feels like to grow older and get worse at what you love to do (not surfing for me, but skateboarding for sure), and how that can be a steady decline into heartbreak—if you let it.
For me, this section was about identity. Does your identity as surfer, or skater, or rider, or rambler, become invalid as your skills become invalid? As your muscles and joints stiffen up, as you get sorer and tired-er, as you work more, travel more, garden more ... and skate less?
For me, there is a real grief to not skating as often or as well as I used to. Fear lurks in every sidewalk crack. Rather than remember the radness of pulling something, I tend to remember the time I ate shit—and how bad it hurt.
As they say, you can't take a sincere path without expecting heartbreak.
But at 41, I'm still a skateboarder. My relationship to it has changed though. I think it isn't about the act of skating (the tricks, the scene, the sessions) but instead it's the wanting it—that hardboiled desire to roll and be free—that makes you a skater.
Says Finnegan: "Now I'm one of those New Yorkers incessantly on the point of going back where I came from. But with me it's not a matter of packing up or staying on, but rather of being always half posed to flee my desk and ditch engagements in order to throw myself into some nearby patch of ocean at the moment when the waves and wind and tide might conspire to produce something ridable. That cracking, fugitive patch is where I come from."
15 Joys
The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, mini ramp + beers and bar food, not forcing myself to be present for this blog, as work-life blazes and the burnout is real. Etc. Read More>
1. The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs: Recalcitrant moving-picture poetry from the Coen Bros.
2. Mini ramp + beers and bar food: A tried and true Friday night maneuver.
3. Not forcing myself to be present for this blog, as work-life blazes and the burnout is real.
4. The purchase and decoration of a tiny living tannenbaum, to be planted on New Year's Day.
5. Wine tasting in Oregon orchard country. Wine tastes good! But I liked the views better I think. On the way home, we saw Mt. Hood framed by a burnished fall sky.
6. Thanksgiving in the mountains, in the snow. Walking in the wilderness for most of the day day, every day.
7. The Impossible Burger at Keys on NE Killingsworth.
8. Barbarian Days, A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. Bare feet. Malaria. Acid trips. A world of waves. And all the stories behind it all.
9. The sisterhood of Sunday morning walks. Despite weather, we get out of bed early to wander the NE Alameda neighborhood drinking coffee and peering in the windows of the rich.
10. The Man Who Invented Christmas, a charming film about Charles Dickens and his creative process as he wrote "A Christmas Carol"—a seminal ghost story from my childhood.
11. Cold weather, and the need for a fire in the wood stove, and the need for the puppy to lay beneath that fire to dry the drench from her fur.
12. The proximity of Christmas vacation, and hopping an early flight to the Colorado high country to go get buried in the storm.
13. The Christmas cactuses at my desk, per their name, blooming right on time, right when one needs them.
14. Nighttime dog excursions. After a day cooped in a cubicle, walking up and down empty streets strung with Christmas lights, with the moon and stars.
15. The white elephant gift exchange at the Nemo Christmas party, where I had a decent bottle of Tempernillo stolen from me, only to come up on some homemade Chex mix and an IPA. Even Steven.
