Powder/Bike/Surfer Are Gone.

Does it Matter?

Joy is worth celebrating at least as much as suffering is worth lamenting.

We have lost 3 cultural institutions. Anyone who cares about skiing, surfing, or mountain biking has lost their culture’s bible. I owe my career, my community, and decades of many of the best moments in my life to Powder Magazine and those who have stewarded it for almost a half century.

Still, as our news feeds bubble over with news of what feels to be an approaching apocalypse, does it really matter? As we careen towards perhaps the most consequential election in our country’s history, grapple with a national reckoning on race, a rapidly changing climate, and the loss of communal sense making, do we really care about the disappearance of a handful of periodicals dedicated to telling stories about the privileged people participating in niche sports?

I have been embroiled in an inner battle over some version of this question for my entire adult life. I will likely go to my grave without a fully satisfying answer. The questions of what to do with one’s life, what makes a meaningful life, and what really matters, have been at the center of human thought across all traditions since the earliest recorded philosophy. Any question about the worth of any pursuit leans on those bigger questions. I have struggled endlessly with these quandaries especially as they relate to my work. I’m privileged enough to be raised as a skier and a mountain biker, which say a lot. I’m a white, upper middle-class, straight, able bodied American male with loving parents. I basically was handed the gold medal in the privilege Olympics before I took my first dump. That said, skiing and mountain biking have brought endless joy to my life and have provided me with community, autonomy, self expression, confidence, freedom, and constant sources of awe: I feel a duty to share.

I was recently assigned a profile piece on a skier for The Ski Journal. I was hesitant, and initially, I declined the assignment. I was already struggling with the notion of spending my time and energy telling stories about skiing and skiers. However, I also didn’t want to lose my voice in an industry that I care deeply about. I hemmed and hawed, and eventually took the assignment. Shortly after accepting, COVID hit America in full force. Then came the murder of George Floyd that would ignite the long overdue reckoning with our country’s brutal history and it’s continuing effects on our fellow countrymen and women. I watched aghast as we descended further into the morass of civil conflict. I marched with Black Lives Matter, I volunteered to help increase voter turnout, I wrote and called my representatives, and I wrote dozens of social media posts which I would later second guess and delete before posting. I did my best to compartmentalize my feelings about the unrest and uncertainty. I went on with my work and life but I pushed the story about the skier to the side. A low intensity guilt about the procrastination hummed in the background. I assumed anyone who was paying attention to the world would understand my hesitation but I also knew the editors and publishers had a job to do, and sooner or later I would have to either start the story or burn a bridge. The latter was not an option for me, so eventually I dove in.

I’ve found the first step toward doing something that you’re avoiding is to lock yourself into some kind of commitment with another person. I sent messages to the potential interviewees and locked myself into meeting times. Then next step was to begin research on the skier. Watching the artistic expression of skiing and independent filmmaking was a welcomed reprieve from endless doom in the news cycle. The more I watched, the more I appreciated and I began to feel an old spark of stoke and nostalgia. I haven’t binged ski content for years but it used to be an annual marker of the seasons, more cherished and emblematic of annual rhythms than any national or religious holiday. Autumn meant the release of new ski and snowboard movie trailers which I would watch on repeat- dozens, sometimes even hundreds of times. I would dissect ever trick, every location, and every shot. The same went for the magazines. I would rush to the grocery store (since it would frequently arrive on the shelf before my mailbox) and spend an hour or more standing in the aisle reading every word and obsessing over every photo from the opening spread to the back cover. I felt a little bit of that obsession trickling back into my consciousness as I re-watched the skier’s edits for the fifth, tenth, twentieth time.

Then began the interviews. I knew about half of the people I spoke with, the others were industry icons that had been untouchable heroes in my younger mind. We often think of journalists as prickly provocateurs asking tough questions but even contentious interviews often begin with simply connecting to the other person. These interviews weren’t about putting anyone’s feet to the flames, they were about sharing stories and insight about the subject. Without exception, I quickly bonded with every interviewee over shared passion for the esoteric that had driven the direction of our lives: moments in relatively obscure films from decades past, the way the light fell or angles converged in a photo printed years before, ruminations about the current state of our culture and industry.

There is something particularly heart warming about the immediate mind-meld created by mutually reminiscing on something as fleeting and inconsequential as a specific trick done on skis captured on film years before. I loved every moment of the exchanges. I had the unique flow-state-feeling of time disappearing into each conversation. I’d look up and realize we’d been talking for two hours. These experiences are one of the great joys of life. What could be more valuable than losing yourself in an exchange of ideas, memories, and stories with another human — devoid of ego, self consciousness, or posturing. Each conversation made me feel more a part of a distinct and beautiful culture.

Thinking back, I realize that this was the feeling the magazines brought into our living rooms. Conversations with our heroes about shared love. They (Powder, Bike, Surfer) heavily influenced all parts of my life, they made me feel a part of something bigger than myself, but even more importantly, they influenced what dreams I had. It exposed me to a words and images that ignited my imagination and showed me a world I would have otherwise not known was possible. They create a collective consciousness and a conversation across space and time about something simple, beautiful, and life affirming.

In a world where so much of our shared mental space revolves around catastrophes of various size, I think celebrating shared joy is as important as it has ever been.

Here is the link to the article referenced : https://www.theskijournal.com/issue_feature/phil-casabon/