Like every avid (addicted?) skier past a certain age, I am impressed, awed, mind-boggled, inspired, sometimes alarmed and always intrigued by the exploits, standards of skill and commitment and thin lines of error in the lives of today’s best skiers. (Note: not the best ski racers, a separate category.) Their lifestyle has evolved into a media savvy/GoPro/self-promotion culture whose members ski outrageous lines down unskiable mountain faces with a few unbelievable inverted aerials thrown (sic) in to keep the incomprehensible interesting. I don’t speak for all skiers past a certain age, but evolution of a lifestyle is fascinating—even if you not entirely facetiously refer to yourself within that culture as a dinosaur.
Last week this old ski dinosaur had the pleasure of coffee and conversation with one of today’s high profile professional skiers with sufficient sponsors to support her passion for skiing and its traveling demands in comfortable style. Amie Engerbretson is 28, began skiing at 3 in Squaw Valley and is pretty with a smile to melt glaciers. Her intelligence and demeanor of satisfaction and joy in the life she has chosen are obvious. We had never met, but I coached Amie’s mother, Nancy O’Connell, when she was a young ski racer in Squaw more than 35 years ago and knew Amie as one of those inspiring, mind-boggling skier/athletes who has made visible the continuous evolution of skiing and, thereby, skiers.
An hour with Amie eased my alarm and increased my respect and appreciation of the modern culture that skis so well along those thin lines of error. What we see in magazines and film is the edited version of considered thought, the judgment of experience, the skill of training and the on-going process of learning from mistakes. I’ve long maintained that skiing is a metaphor for life, and Amie was a reminder that life both on skis and off is a continuum. It is worth contemplating that the under 30 generation is expanding the limits of the possible, nourishing the culture with vision, hope and passion and are the group of eligible voters least likely to vote for Dinosaur Don the Trumpster.
On her website amieski.com she writes in a blog post titled ‘Free Spirit or Homeless…, “My only master is Mother Nature and I am free to make moves completely at the whim of the NOAA forecast.” In another, ‘Blind Spot,’ she and an entire film crew overlooked the obvious and she was completely buried in an avalanche that could have easily killed her. “I knew that the accident report was going to be one that if I had read it about someone else I would have thought, ‘Wow. Those guys were idiots.’… I realized that I had just been a primary witness to the most dangerous aspect of backcountry travel—the human factor… I have always thought I was too smart to make that mistake, but I did. At some point we all have. I am truly grateful that the situation was not worse. Most importantly, I am grateful that this can be a wake up and a lesson in humility for me, and everyone like me, to stay smart, not forget to use our brains and to always check our blind spots.
The first words on her website are: “Amie Engerbretson is more than a pretty face.”