Tomorrow I leave on a ski season. I wrote this post to capture the excitement and emotions I am feeling. I failed. I didn’t even come close to conveying my excitement… but please, read it all the same!
The end of a long countdown is swiftly approaching. I can tell you the exact moment I decided I wanted to work a ski season; it was at the bottom of the inconspicuous ‘Blue 22’, a gentle ski run in the Swiss Alps, lying in the shadow of the Eiger. It was my first ever run… and I was hooked. As I sat on the chairlift, heading back up to do it all over again, adrenaline surging through my veins, feeling more alive than ever, it was then that the dream was forged.
Okay, maybe I lied above – maybe the exact moment I decided I wanted to work a ski season was even earlier than that! I’d heard of people migrating for the winter, away from the cold, dark, rainy days of the UK, and to the still cold and dark days in the Alps, living among towering mountains, enjoying a snow-filled winter wonderland and the finest skiing available, partaking in just a little après-ski here and there, and of course, a little bit of work to pay for the lifestyle! It may have been back then, that I decided I wanted some of that!
I deliberately used the word ‘dream’ above. I’ve done so many awesome things so far. But they weren’t specifically my dreams, rather just me making the most of opportunities presented to me: Camp America was an answer to my desire to travel to a new place cheaply for a summer, while the horse ranch solved the issue of how to spend the rest of my time on my visa with no money. That’s not taking anything away from those experiences, I loved every moment of them, but, this ski season is different – for the first time, I’m doing something I’ve specifically wanted to do. It feels awesome to be able to say that I can think of nothing or nowhere else I’d rather be at this point in my life.
So, tomorrow will mark something of a finale, a finale to all the anticipation. But it will also be a beginning, the start of what will hopefully be, another awesome experience. I imagine if I’d known in that moment on the chairlift, that the dream would become reality, I would have had an even wider smile planted on my face… probably much like I do now, years later.
Josiah Skeats 