Special Trick Shoes

At first I missed my Buddhist poet. He’d been with me on the slopes for the last five years. Inked in silver and black on the topsheet of my old Völkl Mantras, he walked, bearded and imperturbable, from the left ski to the right (two vertical, cloud-shrouded panels) up a mountain path toward a temple on the right ski tip. He was my Zen perspective on skiing as discipline, quest, mystery, obsession.