Q: Why did Utah choose the
slogan “The Greatest Snow on Earth” when it so closely resembled
the Ringling Brothers slogan “The Greatest Show on Earth?”
A: Both businesses attract a lot of bozos.
It’s
okay to hate skiing and to own an automobile without a ski rack.
You don’t need to have your computer bookmarked to all the ski
reports. You do not have to walk around with old ski-lift tags
flapping from the zipper of your jacket.
I’m as
bitter as day-old convenience store coffee when it comes to skiing.
My ex dropped me like a campaign promise in December when she
figured out that I was never really going to learn to ski. I have
very little to talk about in the winter.
This is my 25th
year in Utah and I have never downhill skied and won’t
— ever. Don’t worry about me, though, I’m as
comfortable as any vegetarian in the slaughterhouse could be.
I just don’t get it. “The greatest snow on earth?”
I don’t see Oregon putting the greatest rain on earth on its
license plates, or Kansas boasting that it’s the Tornado
State. Snow is just bad weather that Utah built a tourist industry
around. Not to say I’m not glad for the tourist dollars, but they
could have easily have been redirected toward something more
working class and aesthetically appealing, such as stockcar racing
or bass fishing. Saying that ski resorts are a beautiful use of
mountains makes about as much sense as saying those giant monograms
on the sides of our mountains promote literacy.
Skiing is
an addictive behavior, and like all such behaviors it should be
ridiculed and regulated. It’s not as though I don’t have a few
strange habits and nearly uncontrollable yearnings of my own. There
is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t hear a pepperoni pizza
and a pint of cold beer singing a siren’s song in harmony, but I
don’t skip out on work to answer it. My sick days are more or less
randomly distributed throughout all 12 months of the year. Check
this statistic on a few of the ski addicts where you work.
I admire the creative excuses they concoct to coincide
with fresh powder days, and likewise, I have become a proficient
liar when explaining why I spent the weekend renting movies instead
of plundering the slopes.
“Gee, I’d like to ski, but I
have these bad knees from saving all those children from burning
buildings.” Or, “I’ve stopped skiing because of the voices in my
head that keep saying, ‘cut the ski lift cables.’” And,
“I’d like to ski, but I don’t have many clothes that go with
magenta, and I look really bad with that raccoon goggle tan-line
thing.”
I’m far from a couch potato, but not skiing makes
me a non-athlete in the West. I can shoot 40 percent from the
three-point line and have more sports paraphernalia of questionable
value than REI’s dumpster; I just prefer sports where you
cannot be killed or injured by trees.
Is skiing really
dangerous? I can’t say, but I am constantly berated for not
wearing a helmet on any bicycle trip outside of my driveway. Yet
skiers routinely wear nary a sock hat when traveling twice as fast
as I can ride.
I have learned that I don’t have to
ski to talk about skiing. I can even be polite. If trapped at a
winter dinner party, I can throw in key words such as carve, black
diamond ski runs and “those snow-boarding kids are ruining
everything” to bluff my way through to dessert. The serious ski
rhetoric doesn’t start till after dinner when people have had
a few more drinks.
For instance, what if the first thing
I said about my girlfriend or spouse was: “She has a great, 20-foot
jump shot”? You’d consider me a little shallow. I have, however,
met more than a few women who have introduced a significant other
as “This is my husband. He is a really great skier.”
I
nod approvingly, but wonder, “Does he love you? Has he ever been
convicted of a felony?” Then I remember my lines and say, “I bet
he’s awesome on the black diamonds.”
Dennis Hinkamp is a contributor to Writers on the Range,
a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado (hcn.org). He lives in Logan, Utah, and works in extension
communications for Utah State University.
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