Reconnection | Of Wonder and Joy
By Ayja Bounous
Originally published for Hence Supply Co. in February, 2023.
A surge of dread at the beginning of the ski season is common for me. The start to the 2022/2023 season was no different. This dread is about more than just worrying that my ski gear will be disorganized. Or that my legs won’t be up to the task (though both of those things cost me at least an hour of sleep the night before the first tour). My anxiety is rooted in something else—the pace of winter.
The darker, colder, and shorter days mean a slower lifestyle often spent more indoors. But for the ski community, winter means preparation for fast-paced environments. Snowstorms lead to early mornings, physical exertion, and getting caught in crowds— the hoards of people and cars that make their way up the canyons in search of a small taste of mountain life. We gear up, pack the car (Tetris style) or carefully arrange gear and climb onto a bus, strategize about timing, and decide which resort or trailhead is ideal for the conditions.
Perhaps it’s because I often feel alone in this anxiety. My friends will say, “I can’t wait to ski,” and I sometimes can’t truthfully say “me too” in response. Sometimes I experience so much dread the night before a predicted powder day that I start looking for excuses for why I shouldn’t go. When I bail, I spend the rest of the day scrolling through photos posted by others on social media and believing I made a horrible mistake.
I was caught up in the panic of Wasatch winters. I became disheartened. I was still skiing at least once a week and having fun, but it wasn’t joyful. That is, until my 95-year-old grandpa, Junior, started skiing again.
In the fast-paced world of skiing and snowboarding, I often feel like a sloth. I struggle to keep up. I’m not a fast-paced person. I’m slow to make decisions, slow to speak, slow to relay my ideas or concerns. I sometimes have a hard time changing plans at the last minute.
To ski with Junior, I was forced to slow down. Not because he was a slow skier. He has better ski technique than most and he's fast. But the reasons for skiing changed. The conversations on the chairlift shifted. And the pace slowed.
Skiing with him was not about timing out a rope drop. It wasn’t about getting photos or videos of skiing in untracked powder or catching air. Skiing with him meant appreciating the mountain in a way I hadn’t since I was a child—pausing to admire the way the snow glittered in the sun, ducking into trees to make wiggle turns, noticing a Steller’s Jay in a nearby pine tree. Skiing with him was, in a word—wonderful.
As a result, I reworked my relationship with skiing. I began to distance myself from the crowds. I realized that I didn’t need to keep up with other people's pace. If skiing stopped feeling enjoyable, I learned how to walk away and find a quieter corner of the mountain. I was reconnecting with why I loved skiing in the first place—finding beauty and joy in a landscape I loved, with people I loved.
Amidst this process, I met a few friends and my sister, Tyndall, at Snowbird. It turned out to be the day after an epic storm. As we booted up that morning, I had a brief moment of worry about the crowds and the hype of a bluebird Saturday. But that feeling was quickly eclipsed—we were excited just to be with each other.
While the crowds gathered at one rope drop and then the next, our group, led by my sister and me, found a secluded spot on the mountain. It required an easy traverse, had a nice pitch, and was completely devoid of other people. The powder was hip-deep. We stopped often to appreciate the mystical clouds congregating over Twin Peaks and the way the snow crystals sparkled under the winter sun. Sometimes we’d just lie in the snow and look around at the mountains.
We took slow lap after slow lap and still our tracks remained the only ones on this slice of the mountain. At one point, Tyndall and I started skiing at the same time and “figure 8-ed” each other's turns—probably one of the first times since we were kids. And at the bottom of each run, we smiled at each other and shook our heads in disbelief—joy.
Leading up to this moment, my love for skiing had often felt like a sweater that was falling apart. Skiing with my grandpa had begun the process of stitching new patches over holes that had developed. That slow day with my sister and friends was the final tug that seemed to cinch all those fraying pieces back together. Amidst a fast-paced environment, I was able to find a slower pace—to rediscover wonder and joy.
