It’s been a while since I’ve posted about my dream of traveling the world through ski instructing—just about three years, in fact. At that time, my plan was to spend every season in the snow for the next three years after college, and I stuck to that plan for two seasons. Here’s how it’s gone so far:
June 2019: New Zealand
Ski instructing in New Zealand was such a journey for me. I had just graduated college and I wanted to stick to my dream of exploring the world through snow culture. So I said a very tearful goodbye to my boyfriend, boarded a plane, and found myself in the small ski town of Ohakune, at the base of Mt Ruapehu.
From the end of June to beginning of October, I taught kids, adults, Maori school groups, one hour privates, and back to back two hour shifts that left me time only enough time in between for a bite of muffin stowed in my coat pocket. I made friends with my coworkers, secured spots in their cars for the adventures we took around the area, and sheltered at their apartments on days that it was too stormy for the mountain to open. We laughed at the bubble wrap on their windows and at the gumboot throwing range in Taihape. My parents had told me they were separating maybe a month before I left, and I was missing my boyfriend like hell. I got a second job at a burger place maybe halfway into the season, and then came down with the worst illness I’ve had in my life—two weeks of exhaustion, coughing and fever dreams. It was a season of development, that’s for sure. It felt like the beginning of a really gradual growing pain.
December, 2019: Colorado, US
The next North American winter I spent back at my home mountain of Winter Park, reunited with my boyfriend in a little second year employee housing room. I spent the season studying for my Level 2 exam, teaching a lot at the Private Lesson Center, and asking my supervisors to give me more level 5s and 6s on the kid side.
I had so many days I was proud of. I taught a beginner private lesson almost completely in Spanish. On a slow day, I co-taught with one of my coworkers who only had one small girl (he said she was lonely). I played pretend with her on the lift and then taught them all tree safety and led them through my favorite Mary Jane tree runs once we got off. At the end of the day, my co-worker told me he was surprised and impressed by my teaching and skiing. I was heartened, but why was he surprised, I wondered. I’ve been doing this for six years in three different countries, and he knew that. I had a few power struggles with the more spoiled kids, and felt frustrated when I saw some of the female new hires consistently getting put either on the 3 and 4 year old program or the very beginner levels, while their male counterparts got a few token low level/little kid classes and then headed on to level 4s.
I took my exam at the end of February, and passed two thirds of it. I was gearing up to take the last portion again in April when Winter Park shut down on Saturday, March 14. I had heard people wondering just that morning if we would shut down because of the pandemic and I felt almost exasperated by their wondering. The whole resort closing seemed ridiculous and laughable to me, and yet it happened. (Later on, of course, I supported the decision.)
Without getting the final portion of my Level 2, but mostly because of covid-19, teaching overseas again this last summer was impossible, and that was fine with me. I was happy to quarantine with my family and live life a little bit slower than I had been. As it dragged on, though, and as the world started to burn hotter in the flames of social injustice and weird natural disasters, I started getting restless. In June, the month that we said covid surely would never live to, I decided to go back to Colorado and do Workaways (volunteering in return for housing). Now it seems like another ski season is on its way to happening, and I don’t want to miss it. Plus, student to teacher ratios are finally going to be at my dream level. I’ll be exploring Telluride this winter, if the universe wills it, and after that, who knows.
Will travel still be impractical by summer of 2021? And even if it’s possible, is it the best thing I could do with myself in those months? Even though I still really want to teach in Canada and Japan, I feel some kind of way about going all that distance, using all those fossil fuels and spreading all my germs, just to do a job that citizens of those countries could probably do themselves. So it’s looking like my dream of exploring the world through ski instructing might morph into something else. Time will tell what that will look like.
Since all this social upheaval began in earnest, I’ve found myself asking how what I’m doing is serving my community, and who my community is, anyway, or who it could be. I never have a good enough answer. I know I’m not alone in my uncertainty, and the feeling that there’s more out there that I could be doing. And not more in a resume building way, more in a “there’s something different out there on a whole other plane of existence” kind of way.
I could be being things to people that I’m not already. I could be connecting to my neighbors in a way that I’m not right now. I could be feeling for the world all sorts of things that are too scary and heartbreaking to feel. And how to tie that all in to my day to day existence, that’s the question I’m trying to figure out.
If I continue my path as a ski instructor, I want it to mean something beyond getting tipped at the end of the day, living paycheck to paycheck, taking the next exam so I can get the next raise that will perhaps one day give me a livable wage. I want to be more than a pawn of the ski resort corporations and their continually skyrocketing lesson prices, which we see so little of and which exclude so many groups from learning my favorite thing in the world.
I guess I just feel like now our leaders have an opportunity for restructuring snow culture. I can see the future I want: resort employees paid livable wages, free lessons to under served students where the kid to teacher ratio isn’t 14:1, affordable housing, and affordable lift tickets so my friends of color can take their kids to the mountain and they can see other kids like themselves already there.
What I can do to help get us there, I’m not sure yet. If anyone has a task force based on any of these ideas, hit me up XD For now, I’ll follow my instinct and do my best day by day.