“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.”
Aristotle

John Crews both knows and understands his own well-lived life of learning, experiencing, exploring the limits of and teaching several physical skills in the spirit of Icarus. To John, that spirit does not represent the mainstream association of Icarus with the human weakness of hubris and its inescapable destructive consequences. Instead, for Crews, the spirit of Icarus embodies the Stephen Hawking quote, “The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.” He delineates this difference in the introduction as “”…the Icarus spirit that determines whether Icarus spirits appear as ‘crazy people’ or as ‘smart people’ with a slightly different value system.”
Crews is smart and completely aware that the line that characterizes the two aspects of Icarus spirit is as thin and some would say invisible as the difference between good judgment and good luck, as evidenced in the sub-title of “The Spirit of Icarus”: Tales of Flying Close to the Sun. Chronologically, the initial autobiographical tale in this fine book is about John’s first fall down the basement stairs in his family’s Washington State home when he was 1 ½ years old. He writes, “My next clear memory is of sitting on the concrete floor at the bottom of those stairs looking back up. I was not clear about what had happened in between, except that it had been very exciting. The strange sensations all over my body I recognized as PAIN, which called for extreme vocalization until someone showed up to make it better.”
That first very exciting experience appears to have inspired in John a slightly different value system and a lifetime quest for more and more and more and, yes, there has been some pain. “The Spirit of Icarus” is a beautiful depiction in word and photo of that quest. John Crews has spent his life polishing his physical skills at the limits of moving on, in and through as well as considerable air time over water (if one accepts that snow is a form of water), and he has passed on his understanding of that life as one of the outstanding teachers of his professions. I have known, liked and admired John for many years through the world of one of his endeavors……skiing……and can attest that he is one of the finest skiers and ski instructors in America. I am neither practiced nor knowledgeable in matters of the warm weather, big wave, oceanic endeavors he pursues when winter ends each year, but his reputation allows me confidence that he is as accomplished as practitioner and teacher there as he is on skis.
And there is this: on the wall of my office is a small cloth tapestry given to me by a friend with a depiction of Buddha and a quote attributed to him. The quote reads:

Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing,
You will be successful.

John Crews is 68 years old and a happy man.

Check out the book available at your local bookstore or on Amazon