On Skiing and Identity

My mom is doing a deep purge of our childhood home and it got me thinking about whether I should try to sell my old skiing equipment that’s still sitting back at her house, but my brother Bryce is trying to convince me otherwise.

Bryce thinks that if I ever moved back to Calgary, I might want to go skiing occasionally, so it would be smarter to hold onto the equipment in the chance that I might use it again. His argument makes sense, except for the fact that I’m not sure I genuinely enjoy skiing anymore, and I think that my reluctance to sell the gear is because I know how much Bryce wants me to enjoy skiing and I don’t want to let him down.

I think that I want to enjoy skiing more than I actually enjoy skiing itself, I love the idea of it as well as the associated imagery (snow, mountains, chalets, the clothing etc.). I learned to ski as a child and had a brief rekindled romance with it back in 2013/2014, but anytime I’ve gone skiing as an adult, it’s mostly just been another way to spend time with Bryce or my friends, and I don’t think I have fully enjoyed the skiing aspect as much as I should have.

Even though I haven’t skied very much over the last fifteen years, skiing is still a small part of my history, and if anybody asked me whether I was a skier, I would tell them yes, because I know how to ski, and I choose to ski over snowboarding, but I don’t personally identify as a skier or feel any sort of kinship with other skiers, which I know my brother does.

I thoroughly enjoy the act of hurtling downhill on a pair of skis and feeling the cold barrage of wind against my face. That part of skiing is wonderful, but I could easily live the rest of my life without the expensive lift tickets, the early morning drives to the mountains, waiting for chair lifts, waiting on chair lifts, the painful boots (which I’ll never break in because I don’t ski enough), as well as enduring the cold weather for a whole day. I’m also not the biggest fan of ski hills and the corporations that own and run them.

I know Bryce really wants me to enjoy skiing as much as he does, and I really wish I could experience them from his perspective — I would love to feel for myself, just how much joy skiing brings to him. However, we are very different people and I have no natural affinity for adrenaline sports. Bryce’s fearlessness is inspirational, and I hope that he can realize that just because I don’t love skiing doesn’t mean that I don’t respect and admire the fact that he does.