Words: Colin Wiseman 2017-10-30 16:29:41
A decade ago—September 11, 2007, to be exact—I crossed the Peace Arch border southbound with all my worldly possessions stuffed into a burgundy Subaru wagon. I was en route to Bellingham, WA, a town in which I’d never set foot, to live with people I’d never met. Fresh out of the University of Calgary with a master’s degree in sociology and a head full of Venezuelan oil politics, I was moving for an unpaid internship with a snowboard-focused quarterly operating out of a 300-square-foot office above a Mexican joint. It looked out onto the backside of a parking garage.
I’d had some pretty serious interviews in Calgary following graduation. Suit-and-tie affairs with high-end marketing firms, preliminary talks with multinational oil companies. Interviews way up in tall buildings with floor-to-ceiling windows and promises of a six-figure future. My graduate advisor was pushing me toward a PhD out east. Conventional logic would tell me to jump on one of those opportunities. But I chose to move west with nothing but a promise of a season at Mt. Baker and a chance to learn from snow media icon Jeff Galbraith.
Why? Because snowboarding.
The only reason I went to the U of C was for the nearby riding opportunities, whether daily park laps at Canada Olympic Park, or weekend missions to the alpine of Sunshine Village and Kicking Horse. There were better schools in Toronto, but what young snowboarder dreams of living in Toronto?
So, I went south. I made it work for those first few years via research contracts with another Canadian university. And I learned and grew alongside my comrades at Funny Feelings, LLC. Eventually, we moved into a bigger space, still modest, but with room to expand. We launched a flyfishing title. Produced custom books for commercial clients. Found a way for everyone to make it work. And 10 years later, we’re still growing, still thriving as a truly independent content company from the mountains of Cascadia.
A decade onward, those oil-country high-rises couldn’t be further from my mind. I’ve replaced the Subaru with an AWD minivan. That couple with whom I first shared a house are damn near family. It feels like home. Mt. Baker’s glaciated presence reminds me daily that I’ve made the right choice, even when deadline time rolls around and we’ve got to work 60-plus-hour weeks. We have world-class mountain biking, good fishing and decent surf at the coast, and it’s all close enough to enjoy daily. I may not be anywhere near that six-figure salary, but I like to consider mine a six-figure lifestyle. In the winters, I can usually ride powder when it snows. What’s that worth?
We live in a society that adores consumption. But if you’re reading this, you’ve probably chosen snowboarding to a certain extent as well. And whether you’re holed up three-deep in a Jackson Hole studio apartment or dreaming of your annual two-week Tahoe vacation, you’ve likely sacrificed a few objects along the way to find that feeling.
When I see you grinning in the lineup on a Wednesday morning or sharing a laugh at the base area bar on a Saturday afternoon, it justifies my own path in life. Because we believe in something beyond the American Dream. We believe in community. We believe in the magic of the mountains. We believe in experience over possessions. We believe in unconventional logic. We believe in snowboarding.
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Unconventional Logic
https://digital.thesnowboardersjournal.com/articles/unconventional-logic