Stepping into the sunroom on the south side of the cabin, the only room with any light now, I drink and feel the walls of isolation pressing in heavily all around me. Getting used to the dead phone was ok as long as it was the only thing I had to worry about. I had my immense music collection to entertain me while I waited for a dial tone to connect me with the rest of the world again. It is sometimes refreshing to be unreachable. But now the power's gone too. Not to mention the hot water froze overnight. Five miles in by the most direct route, ten miles by the longest, and already I haven't spoken a word to anyone for days — I look into my cave-ish living room immediately remembering the previous twenty year resident describing a winter here when the power went out and never came back. I admit, I'm worried.

Surrounded by miles of fluffy dry, deep powder snow, with packed up-tracks leading to all the choice spots I've been skiing the past few days, I realize that I'm experiencing a complete reversal of what I normally take for granted. As a ski bum, I have never felt that there was enough powder, and I've always finished each good day longing for one more run, or a dozen more runs, while the company of friends, conversation, the stereo, going out on the town, I have always just taken for granted as part of everyday life. When I moved into this cabin, and got snowed in back in November, already I lost the most powerful aspect of the company of friends which is the physical interaction, the here and now going somewhere doing something part of life, and became limited to conversations over the wire, through the earpiece. I've lost that altogether now for the past week with my phone line patiently silent. And now with the power outage, all those little luxuries like electric lights, blender, stereo, and writing on the computer, which have essentially become my companions: the warmth of my cabin atmosphere; have been taken away as well. All the while, the best skiing of my life lies just outside, and it's not going anywhere, the sun is not going to destroy it today, I can ski as much of it as I want, and in fact I have been for three days now. Yesterday I skinned for well over 5,000 vertical feet of perfect powder turns, and the day before that for 7,000, and the day before that for over 3,000.

The powder skiing addict in me is completely satisfied, in fact, exhausted. But that other side of me — the one that thrives on personal interaction, culture, good times — is starved and alone. With every element of normal life stripped from me, I am forced to look inward, forced to live 100% with just myself. To keep a fire for warmth, and wash with cold water in the dark. I stare blankly — at the walls, the windows, the snow outside. Thoughts about going skiing, and doing some shovelling around the cabin play through my head as a silent passage of scenes and ideas. I'm faced with just me, and when completely isolated to just myself, I struggle with the real meaning of my life. What is my motivation to be here? Where am I to derive joy and satisfaction? I cannot tell anyone that the skiing is incredible, or describe the particularly good line of the day. Without music, and with no lights to see by, I have no external stimulation, no luxury or sense of comfort, no mask to disguise the reality of why I'm here. I can read, but it feels like denial of the present. Every passing minute I am immersed in the unbridled flow of my stream of conciousness; what do I want, what do I see outside, how do I feel. And this is very strange and quiet, and leaves me lost, sitting in the grey-blue shades of sunlight filtering through the clouds.

The smoothie is drying on the glass as I question why I decided to move into a cabin, a "job" that is isolated by the mountains, and a deep snowpack. I can no longer ignore what has been haunting me since I stepped out of society two months ago. Is it so difficult to find the root of my desire to ski simply because I've skied so much good snow lately? Is my physical exhaustion dousing the intense fire within? Perhaps, and if so, all the better to analyze my true motivations. I realize that much of my previous motivation to ski came from relating my experiences to friends, feeling their respect and admiration, and the companionship of each day spent in the mountains together. And now that is the rare circumstance, and when I do finally talk to someone about the skiing, it may be days from now, a week or more, and it will then simply be a description of events, a story, not a motivational tool.
I realize that I must find peace with a deeper, private source for why I am here, why I chose this path, because without discovering and knowing the true motivations for who I am and what I want to do, the power will not only be dead in my cabin, it will be dead in me.

Tracing the grains of wood along the floor to the small finish nails, and the occaisional screw, my eyes wander as my mind ponders, and I begin to see that I have not had to deal with these parts of myself — beliefs and motivations, happiness and depression — so openly before in my life. I now wonder why I quit my serious cello career in high school so that I could move to the mountains to be a ski bum? Why has skiing and the mountains seemed so important to me over the years? Was it just a materialistic desire to be the person in the pictures of the glossy ski magazines? At first, maybe, but unknowingly there has always been something hard to touch, impossible for me to accurately understand. In my normal mountain life, there have always been enough distractions that I've been satisfied by the simple fun of it all.

Was it the people, the happy faces, the wild places, the freedom and collective energy of mountain culture that lured me? And if the culture of mountains and people was a focal point in my lifestyle, what then do I have now, since I have almost completely removed that aspect from prominence in my life? It remains when I ski out to town every 7-10 days for a few nights to resupply with food and come back, but now it feels like the anomaly, not the norm. In a dim, silent cabin, surrounded by miles of silent wilderness I ask the void: why have I done this to myself?

My eyes glance over at my journal lying on the small table, with visions of the scribbles within it, and then at the book I've been reading lately: In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, by Peter Mathiessen, and I wonder if more and more of my life really has very little to do with the material ideals of skiing, or climbing, or hiking, in that these pursuits and the feelings that they bring do not seem to directly act as the motivation for me to live here. Is my real motivation lying within a growing desire to live a more natural, free way of life? I read about the cultures and lifestyles of Native Americans, and I think about how no one owned the land. No one bought and sold anything with money that they had to earn working for someone else. They lived an entirely free life, trading with what they had for what others could bring, and were so close to the heart of nature that I often think they could see and hear things that I cannot. They certainly could feel very powerful sensations that I cannot. The earth spoke to them, and they listened; living by the sweat of their brow, the spirituality of their soul, and the health of their tribe. A large part of me really yearns for that connection with nature.

And so I look at my skiing, my climbing, my backpacking, and there is a good force that is attached to skiing a particular chute because it looks like a great ski, climbing a particular ridge because it looks like amazing rock, backpacking a route because few people have been there, and the pursuit of the blissful state of mind that results when doing these things, but yet these desires too seem motivated by something deeper, almost intangible, maybe this instinctual passion to develop a stronger sense of place? Have I picked this cabin, this "job" in an attempt to return to a more natural Way? I notice that making turns or climbing ridges, backpacking through basins, or just strolling in the woods causes no loss of money, no payment, and therefore no ownership. No one is getting rich, and nothing is getting destroyed for me to go there and do what I like to do. My gear purchases are so rare and discounted in price that I can't possibly be forwarding the industry. My simple pursuits in the backcountry are in harmony and flow freely within the natural environment. And I like that.

Surrounded by silence — empty and complete — I can strangely watch the workings of my mind, the reeling of falling inward but not wanting to, yet fantasized by the sensation. No clock is showing me how much "time" has passed, but I feel years piling up, falling away, answers and questions, reasons and uncertainty. My ski gear lays spread out in front of me, my cabin walls surround me, and the vast wilderness surrounds the cabin. Out of this eerie meditation, I realize that I would lose the most vital element of who I am if I traded this place, this moment, this lifestyle, and that the reason I am here is exactly what I've been picking at all morning, and exactly what I've always been unknowingly pursuing: to be simple, to escape ownership and money if I can, and to develop a closer connection with the natural world. I do not feel made for this 21st century industrialized civilization. And this "job", this isolated cabin, the meditation of skiing, climbing, and hiking is all part of my soul's desperate hope to return to a more natural, quiet Way.

When I was surrounded by friends and people, towns and streets, cars and shopping malls, ski lifts and easy access "backcountry", it was easy to just talk about the good snow, the amazing tree skiing, the fantastic open turns that I or others made in the perfect powder. It was easy to talk about the quality of the rock, the feel of the holds, the interesting moves, the scary exposure. It was easy to describe hiking through basins for twelve days and not seeing a single person. It was easy to make the words, the actions, become the motivation. But now, faced with this briliant moment of isolation, I cannot mask myself anymore, cannot gloss over my intentions, or motivations. The words just don't work when their's no one to talk to. I have to let go. I'm left with my soul open and naked, the inner workings exposed, and the true foundations being filled by a quiet sense of place, peace, and truth. My heart warms at this new, honest understanding. I guess I am no longer the skier I once was, making turns for the turns' sake, and being disappointed if they weren't quite right.

I realize that if I'm motivated by a deep desire for a more natural existence, skiing then has become distilled into a form of meditation, a wordless communication with the river of wildness that fills every day in the backcountry. And the same goes for climbing or backpacking. They are experiences that allow for introspection, revelation, and a powerful communication with our living earth. By watching the unstoppable flow of the natural environment, I feel less egocentric, more grounded. I struggle with no longer attaching a style that can be watched, but one that has to be felt. These activities are not a life in of themselves. The moves, the turns, the trips are not the reasons for the dedication to this way of living, they are the celebration of that dedication to freedom in the mountains. It used to sound so good to say: skiing is life, but now that just rings hollow and immature. More important is what you come home to, what binds all the mechanics together into a fluid, blissful organic life. Skiing is just gliding, climbing is just balancing, backpacking is just walking. But without them I could not sit and read in a dark cabin miles from nowhere feeling happy. Afterall, coming home requires that you leave.

Getting my stuff together, the question of motivation sticks with me, but for now anyway, I more clearly understand that my life doesn't revolve around the beauty of the turns, but instead the beauty of the turns is described by the revolution of my life as a whole — the walking of the mountains and the ephemeral symphony of a natural life.

I make three runs, through glorious powder snow, each turn as wonderful as any I've ever felt; just dancing in the golden late afternoon light. Returning to the cabin, as darkness begins to fall, the power, the lights, the music come back on. A warm and comforting feeling, my soul takes immediate refuge in the luxuries. I still do not have a dial tone connection with the outside world, but I no longer feel so estranged from it. I have come home, and I have also come to grips with myself, my desires, my dreams. It's Christmas Day, and suddenly I am hit by the marvelous, mystical nature of this year's most unexpected gift.

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