Warren Miller, who died on January 24 at the age of 93, needs no introduction. His influence on the post WWII explosive growth of American skiing and his legacy on younger generations of skiers are unmatched. Every American skier of a certain age grew up with Warren’s personally narrated films as a highlight of the year and nutrition for the spirit and mind seeking in mountains for what he once described as, “It’s our search for freedom. It’s what it’s all about -man’s instinctive search for freedom.”
In his autobiography he writes, “People remember their first day on skis because it comes as such a mental rush. When you come down the mountain from your first time on skis, you are a different person. I had just now experienced that feeling, if only for half a minute; it was step one in the direction I would follow the rest of my life.” He was following that direction when WWII interfered and enrolled in the officer’s training program with the Navy.
When the war ended Warren returned to America, bought an 8 mm Bell and Howell camera and spent the next few winters with his friend Ward Baker living a quintessential dirt bag ski bum life out of a tiny trailer in the parking lots of Sun Valley, Alta. Jackson, Aspen, Mammoth and Yosemite. He learned how to make ski films, as he put it, “…by blundering along.” Several ski clubs turned down his first film because they determined he needed a ‘professional’ narrator. Finally, the Ski Club Alpine of southern California agreed to a showing at which he later recalled, “The audience laughed at my stories, not just polite laughs, but amazingly loud belly-laughs. The film really worked, even though I had no script other than the one that was lodged in my brain.”
That brain changed the world of American skiing and ski films. When I was a boy in the early ‘50s in Reno, Nevada the annual Warren Miller ski film was a milestone of the year and, like everyone, I loved it. As I became a young adult ski racer and, later, ski instructor/coach/writer Warren and I became friends and I grew to love him as a person and more deeply appreciate his influence on American skiing and skiers and on my own life.
In the fall of 1972 I was adrift, skiing but not working in the ski world as I had been doing and more counter to the dominant culture than ever. A letter from Warren, who I had not seen in a couple of years, caught up to me asking if I’d like to join him and a crew on a several week trip to Europe to ski for his camera. The trip included money, expenses, good company and, of course, the best powder snow in the Alps. I replied that I would love to go but that there might be a problem. I hadn’t shaved or cut my hair in awhile and had a beard to the middle of my chest and hair below my shoulders and intended to keep it that way. I knew that Warren, to put it mildly, did not approve of what that represented in the early 1970s, and when he didn’t immediately reply I assumed the invitation was off. A few weeks later a letter arrived saying, “Let’s go.”
And we did.
We did some really good skiing for Warren’s camera at the finest ski resorts in Switzerland and France for more than a month, including some of the most memorable powder of my life. Warren used that footage in at least two films and it was well received and is still fun to watch. The trip remains in memory as some of my best time with Warren and crew and some of the best skiing of my life. But what I remember best of all was included in the delayed “let’s go” letter in which he wrote, “I’ve always maintained that what’s in a man’s head is more important than whatever is on it.”
That is, Warren Miller believed in people even when he disagreed with them, and, if they were honest, he supported them. He helped me understand that there is as much social/cultural/ideological freedom for the person who holds that belief as there is a different kind of freedom in the mountains and snowfields of the world.
Thanks, Warren.