The poet Bliss Carman wrote of "the trumpets of the north," of "the great winds" and of "the pale wild raiders of the snow." Winter, with its trumpets and winds, is more than a season, at least to us riders of the snow. It is a way of life, and of looking at life, and its onset is a reminder for me -- decidedly not a man for all seasons -- that the shivery season, like life itself, is to be used, not wasted.
For many of us, reared on the legends of the snow and the mystery of the mountains, the best use of winter is on a white-clad hill. Skiing is the north's great sport -- apologies to hockey, a kind of soccer on ice, and played in June and in Florida. For all of its worship of the new (new shapes for skis, new materials for poles, new form-fitting technologies for boots, new fashions for ski bunnies), skiing is a sport peculiarly rooted in the folklore of the old. Here, for early-evening reading after the chilly rush of a day on the slopes, are three essentials of the sport. (Don't stay up late; you've got to be on the express gondola at Mont Tremblant at 7:15 a.m. for the First Tracks breakfast run. Meet you there.)
Start with I Skied the Thirties (Deneau Publishers, with the Canadian Ski Museum, 1979), by W. L. Ball. Bill Ball, who started skiing during the First World War years and continued through the 1970s, competed for Canada in cross-country, ski jumping, downhill and slalom. His little book, only 116 pages long, is the perfect companion to the slopes, primarily of Canada's East, and it is written with the kind of pioneer spirit and whoosh of the wind that characterized skiing's early days, which did not include valet parking and high-tech parkas.
Ball concentrates on the 1930s because, he wrote, "they were the years when skiing for the sheer exhilaration of running hills and making turns at high speed was discovered." The book includes a foreword by Jackrabbit Johannsen, perhaps the most colourful skier of all time and the subject of another Canadian ski classic, The Legendary Jackrabbit Johannsen (1993), by Alice E. Johannsen.
More Arts Stories
Don't omit Skiing (Copp Clark, 1939), by Walter Prager. He was the storied coach of the Dartmouth College and United States Olympic ski teams, and his book, part of the old Barnes Sports Library, is the essential primer to the sport in its primitive, which is to say its best, days. This volume is chock full of good advice if you have occasion to find yourself hurtling down a ski jump at high speed: "Once in the air, you must hold a position which will effectively carry out the promise of a perfected jump." Best not to try this at home.
Skis have changed and, so, alas, have skiers, but this much remains true: "It may happen that you fall into the snow. It might not be your fault, because the skis can be very independent and perverse at the beginning. If you should happen to fall, you must know how to regain your feet without taking off your skis." In the great books, the great truths endure.
My final choice is The Hannes Schneider Ski Technique (Harcourt, Brace, 1938), by Benno Rybizka. Schneider was the great skimeister of St. Anton am Arlberg, who fled Austria in 1939, took up residence in New Hampshire's White Mountains and is remembered as the founding father of modern skiing. Many of his protégés, including Franz Koessler, Otto Tschol and Toni Matt, are among the most famous figures in North American ski history. It was Schneider's genius to blend safety and speed in skiing, and if he was a control freak, it was only because control was the key to the freedom that skiing afforded and that endeared this sport to millions.
Among the highlights of this volume are the illustrations. They are small and spare, as pictures of this era often were. Many of them are taken from movies. They were produced at the Sunshine Ski Lodge, as it once was called, near Banff, with the assistance of the Canadian Pacific Railway. These pictures show skiers performing their wintry art with a grace and fluidity seldom seen among the suburban skiers, equipped with modern equipment and lazy technique, who flock to Sunshine and other resorts today. Where are the snows of yesteryear?
The final sentence of this book, written before parabolic skis transformed even the clumsiest klutzes into advanced intermediates, captures the spirit of Hannes Schneider: "We want to teach you your turns, to take you up with us to the glorious mountains, to have you ski with us on the summit, to have you gain new force and happiness, to take back a few rays from the sun for the coming days."
This book has a special resonance for me, for Herbie Schneider, the skimeister's son, was the one who taught me that the joy of the sport was in its careful and artful mastery on the beautiful high hills, where the rays of the sun were the kiss of God, or at least the ski gods. My copy of this book is inscribed by Herbie to me and to my wife: "To Cindy and David, who learned to ski the Schneider way and are still skiing." He's 86, and told me the other day he's hoping to ski again this winter. Look for the fellow with perfect form, skiing by the book.
David M. Shribman, executive editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, holds a Pulitzer Prize but is proudest that his daughters are the fourth generation of females in his family to ski in Quebec's Laurentians.
43