The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 19.1
HATE STOMPS TO STOMP HATE
Words: Ben Shanks Kindlon 2021-11-02 13:40:27
Jess Kimura, one of snowboarding’s greatest examples of fighting through pain, sending and stomping with authority in the Whistler, BC backcountry. Photo: Erin Hogue
I spent a lot of last winter pissed off. Like many, I was angered by the realities of a global pandemic and the ineptitude of our response to the situation. For months on end that frustration further ballooned with almost every major news headline. From COVID-19 to oil spills, to an unfathomable wealth gap and a justice system riddled with injustice—it’s been a lot to stomach. Feeling helpless and unhelpful while in isolation from most friends and family, sometimes those emotions turned inwards. On the flipside, I’ve never snowboarded better in my entire life.
With a somewhat apathetic outlook on the world, I began chucking my carcass more hastily than in years past. At first the approach was beyond careless and needlessly dangerous, beginning on Christmas Eve with a quad kink handrail attempt I had no business making so early in the season. I taco’d but got lucky and hobbled away with nothing more than a badly bruised knee, which allowed me to keep riding and tone it down in sessions to follow. Still, as the season went on, I found myself taking bigger risks while chasing a clip I could play back when I got home. With all that inward anger, I was ready to push—or even punish—myself to a whole new degree in exchange for the high of landing my next trick. I was harder on myself than ever before, but because of the lesson I learned on the handrail, I sought to balance my skills, emotions and expectations. By harnessing just the right amount of that fuck-it ethos, my riding reached new heights.
I discussed this phenomenon with my coworker, Colin Wiseman, on the chairlift at Timberline Lodge, OR, last April. We were at Snowboy Productions’ Holy Bowly and talking about a mutual friend who was really ripping, seemingly more aggressively than usual. Concerned, I mentioned that I’d heard he’d been going through some serious stuff about the same time he was consistently dropping hammers on his snowboard, and other friends in our circle had drawn a correlation between the two. It wasn’t the first time Colin had heard of a rider channeling negative off-hill energy into something positive on the mountain—hell, he even knew of a name for it. “Ah, yeah,” Colin said, “hate stomps. That’s a thing for sure.”
History contains countless examples of turning sadness into strength, pain into power. Many of the world’s most revered works of art, music and movies, as well as athletic feats, happened as the result of someone channeling raw, bitter feelings into their craft. The end product resonates so strongly because of that energy—energy that can sometimes only be tapped into through hardship—coming through in the creators’ work. It boils down more simply to taking bad feelings and transforming them into something that ultimately feels good. It makes me wonder what the snowboarders in some of my most cherished videos were going through when they filmed their iconic parts. Behind every clip is a story, some heavier than the footage would indicate.
While I, along with my rapidly receding hairline, wouldn’t suggest spending your time as pissed off as I did last year, it can be inevitable. But when those feelings arise, ask yourself: What are you going to do with it? Knowing that plenty more unexpected obstacles are sure to arise, I’m happy to have a loose plan for what the future holds. There are times to sit back, go with the flow and heal, and other times when we need to let negativity spur us into producing something positive. We can use hate to stomp, then use the resulting drive to stomp out hate.
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