"Dreaming of a Colder Day"
By Joshua Ceazan
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But, like an adolescent boy
clinging to the wettest of his pubescent dreams, a ski-freak
always seems to remember those visions dealing with his most
sacred of passions. The truth be told, some real life ski
experiences are most accurately described as an intermeshing of
fantasy and reality. Highlights from these days tend to be
replayed in the skier's psyche like a skipping record, reminding
us over and over again what life is worth living for.
Back to real time-hypothetically it is nearing mid-day and
you are in an office or campus library somewhere, surfing the
computer's internet. Maybe the word "surfing" triggered it, but
all of a sudden, your pulse quickens as you have just remembered
last night's playground and are now pressing the replay button in
your brain a couple hundred times. Surfing the pleasure memory
banks of your head-that's escapism in its finest form-the type no
megabyte storing, software running, e-mailing box of wires can
ever replace.
Lunchtime arrives and, skipping out of wherever you earn a
living or improve your brain, a crisp blast of autumn wind
assaults your senses. Fallen leaves are swirling in circles from
the force of a breeze which holds in its icy confines the promise
of a new winter.
So go ahead, dream on, because it won't be long until that
breeze holds more than a promise. Maybe when it returns, big
white snow flakes will be part of the package. Individual
parcels piling onto each other, layer upon layer, transforming
the mountainside into one big communal bed where we can all play
out our dreams, without being woken by an alarm clock.
The End
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October is upon us, and with each passing day, winter inches
closer on the heels of the fall. For powder-heads the world
over, one symptom of the seasonal change is a proliferation of
ski-centered dreams: nightly hallucinations in which we can fly
over trees and creek beds while slowly rotating fluid 360-degree
helicopters; all of us superhuman.
Everyone knows the scenario-you are descending a perfect
pitch of knee-high powder stashed away in a hidden glade. A
friend skis behind you, matching your turns in perfect
synchronization. You spot your line: a steep log chute. Catching
air off a little lump and, arching up like a kamikaze bomber
getting ready to deliver his deadly message, you explode into a
billowy cushion of whiteness right between two trees. The light
at the end of the tunnel is just ahead and the gap is short
enough to straightline, which you do with ease, picking up
tremendous speed before emerging into a wide open meadow. The
slope eases up in time for a few wide turns which send you
submerging under a blanket of soft snow before launching off
another little rock. Completely at ease in the air, you throw
your skis up to the side and flash a fat tip-cross as your friend
howls in the background. Screaming like two fiends you disappear
into another thick grove, but watch out, the forest is too thick!
With an abundance of force, you break through a thick tangle of
dead branches. Crunch, crunch, crunch, snap, snap, snap....
beep, beep, beep, beep.
The flashing red digits on your alarm clock read 8:00 A.M.
Time to get up for work, school, or some other thrilling
activity. One thing the rude awakening does not signify is ski
time: an event for which the alarm's blaring signal is welcomed.
As the day begins it's not long before the wonderful snowy
playground that your mind's movie theater transported you to,
just hours earlier, is forgotten.
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