Ladies getting some much needed air time

eamillikin3 Comments

If you haven’t been keeping an eye on the latest trailer releases, you’re in for some excitement. This ski movie season is going to be stellar – just check out the likes of Into the Mind and Valhalla. If your pulse doesn’t pick up, you might already be dead.

But there’s a new ski film trend that has me on the edge of my seat, leaning forward with a big stupid grin on my face. All-female films. Usually I’m not into girls-club, but I cannot wait to see these films.

According to the latest SIA stats, 40% of skiers and 33% of snowboarders are women. Think about it. What was the last ski film you saw? (Maybe you were just watching The Art of Flight for the umpteenth time like me.) What percentage of the riders were kick-ass women were in it? Not 40%. Not even 33%. And don’t you dare say that women don’t go big enough or ride heart-stoppingly gnarly lines. Just check out these teasers/trailers.

The first one I heard about was Pretty Faces, Lynsey Dyer’s compilation of female skiers tearing up some of the most technical terrain in the world and going bigger, harder, faster. My favorite quote from her on making the film?

Skiing has been everything I know. I’ve learned from skiing (about) discipline, how to get through suffering, committing myself, and listening to my intuition. I think a lot of girls think they can’t do what the guys are doing. Skiing’s taught me that I can.

Dyer, you’re speaking my language. The only bad thing is that Pretty Faces doesn’t come out until Fall 2014.

Bummer.

Fortunately, two more films are on their way, highlighting the strength of female riders. Sandra Lahnsteiner’s Shades of Winter premiers this September in Montreal. (Might be worth a road trip to see, but definitely worth tracking down afterwards.)

I’m looking forward to this one… I saw Lahnsteiner’s last film, Shukran Morocco. It’s fairly short, but tapped right in to my wildest dream… to throw my gear on my back and head into Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. The snow never looks very good, but riding in Africa requires an adventurous spirit and a deep appreciation for the culture and geography you’re skiing passed. I love it.

SHADES OF WINTER trailer from Sandra Lahnsteiner on Vimeo.

Shades of Winter promises deeper snow, gnarlier lines, and a larger cast of powerful women. So. Stoked.

3) Finally, there’s Hecuba. I haven’t been able to find all that much chatter about this film, other than that it should drop either this fall or the following spring. My fingers are crossed for sooner rather than later, because I just took a few minutes to browse Aprés Visuals‘ site. They have an incredible eye for sick, slick cinematography. The teaser is below.

I can hardly wait to own each of these films, invite some friends over, and cheer on some of the best riders in the business.

What do you think of these three films? Are you as excited about them as I am…. or are you drooling over another film? There’s plenty of good ones on the way this year. Just check out the list of trailers at Freeskier. You can’t watch just one.

On writing.

eamillikin2 Comments

I’m not used to to talking about writing (or reading).

It seems I have a penchant for surrounding myself not with writers and readers, but biologists, programmers, and artists. They find poetry in the symmetry of shapes or the patterns of cellular structures… not the rhythms of syllables, the proper placement of punctuation, the languid arc of a captivating narrative. Even my friends who are writers, we never talk about writing. We talk philosophy, trading observations, puzzling over cracks in reason and in faith. (It seems we don’t even talk about the books we read. A simple, I enjoyed it, I didn’t, and why seems to suffice.)

As we speak, I’m working toward making writing a large part of my career. Making a business of it. Which means I’m being asked questions I never would have otherwise considered. “How do you deal with writer’s block? What is your writing process?”

With what? My what?

To help me answer these questions in some future interview or passing conversation, I’m going to write about them here. Sorry to interrupt the Slackerisms with something about hard work and ink-stained fingers, but not sorry. I’ll hide it all behind a cut, though I invite you to read on. (And let me know what you think of these questions in the comments – on your thoughts, your process, or whatever.)

Continue reading “On writing.” →

Let’s Do That

eamillikinLeave a comment

A sinus infection laid me low without my even noticing it. I’m the sort that blames every scratchy throat or fuzzy headache on allergies, or a passing cold. Before I know it, three weeks pass and I’m sitting in the doctor’s office, the nurse gasping at my 104º temperature. I had no idea I even had a fever.

The week before, I alternated between the sun, the water, the shade, and 27 mile bike rides with my father. Uphill both ways, as they say.

Before that, I was in New York City, head tilted back and marveling at the fireworks, Amazing Grace on my lips.

The New York trip was a complete spur of the moment impulse. A new friend invited me. The next day I bought my ticket. Two days later, I was on the bus – Burlington to Manhattan. What a change that was.

But what a change it wasn’t. Maybe my head was already thick with the infection I wouldn’t notice for two more weeks, but the process of arriving in the city made me calm. Usually not a fan of cities, I felt relaxed and comfortable.

I love traveling.

But even more so, I love being impulsive.

This is a trait I’ve worked quite hard to quell through random acts of mindfulness, repetition, and routine. I’ve been so “good.” So “steady.” This is all well and good when it comes to major decisions. Job changing. Job searching. Roommate-picking. Interpersonal relationships. But, gosh is it dull!

Haters gonna hate, but Citibikes are awesome.
Haters gonna hate, but Citibikes are awesome.

I love the moment when a metaphorical button is pressed, and before I know it the words are falling out of my mouth. “Yes. I am going to do that. I am going to do that right now. If you’d like to come along, great. But I’m not waiting anymore. I’m going.”

Reminds me of the “Let’s do that” Subaru commercials that were all over the Tour de France coverage.

C’mon. Let’s do that.

Summer in the City

eamillikinLeave a comment

It’s really summer now. Heat, humidity, and thunderstorms that light up the sky.

Summer in Burlington is a beautiful time. Suddenly, Church Street comes alive, packed with tourists and locals rubbing elbows and sampling the fresh tastes of summer in Vermont.

Yeah, it's a really tough life.
Yeah, it’s a really tough life.

The song Summer in the City comes to mind.

In keeping with tradition, here is my little list of things for which I’m completely grateful.

  • Blowing bubbles
  • Cheeseburgers cooked on charcoal grills
  • Sunburnt cheeks and noses
  • The wind cooling me down even as the bike and I push further and faster
  • Dresses worn with bare feet

Happy summer, y’all. (And don’t worry… Winter’s on its way…)

Permission to slack

eamillikin6 Comments

While I was off cycling the midwest, I spent some quality time thinking about this blog. Now that I have a handle on what I want to write about and how I want to write it, I feel comfortable creating a kind of mission statement.

Like any mission statement, this is both a statement of purpose and a statement of intent reflecting the values that I bring to the words I write here… You’ll find the most updated text through the About link to zee left (as well as a brief auto-bio of yours truly), but I want to place it here, too. Front and center.

–

Slackcountry Living is a ski blog that isn’t about the biggest cliff, the deepest pow, or spinning dinner rolls like Jonny Mo. (Although, fingers crossed that these topics come up. But trust me; I won’t be the one doing the dinner-rolling.)

It’s about getting out and enjoying what you got, be it tight trees or breakaway gates, fluffy white or hard ice. When it’s too warm for riding, it’s about the joy of getting outside and living where there are no doors.

No matter the season, this blog is about slacking off – but not in the sense of shirking responsibility or looking for the easy way out. Instead, slacking off means not taking everything so seriously. You don’t need the latest gear or gnarliest terrain to love what you do. All you need is you.

Relax. It’s just skiing.

–

Why this mission statement?

Because I want to support the athletes riding with crooked poles, ski boots with duct tape on the toes, and hand-me-down clothes. I want to shout out to the kids heading outdoors even though their friends would rather go to the mall or play video games or whatever it is kids do these days. Because that’s who I am, too.

We have better things to do than be snooty to someone who can’t afford the latest, lightest binding.

“We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

(Charles Bukowski)

Slap me if I start getting pretentious, okay? Otherwise – enjoy. Love your wilderness.

Double chair Stowe

Can’t take the mountains out of the girl

eamillikinLeave a comment

Liz here, reporting from Central Illinois. This might be the opposite of the slackcountry.Illinois sky

Out here, the geography is flattened, pounded low by a heavenly mallet. Corn fields alternate with soybean fields while the extent of biodiversity appears to be the sporadic inclusion of wheat, rye, and hay. The rainy spring meant for late planting. The corn is only up to my knees, its long leaves trembling in the near-constant breeze.

I’m not fond of this topography. I long for the rambling hills back home (rather, the rambling hills of anywhere else), but I’m here now. So I’m making the most of it by mounting up and going for long rides down straight roads.

My dad is big into bicycling these days, and I must have caught the bug from him. In Burlington, cycling makes sense as a means to an end – a fast way to get around town. Out here, cycling is the chance to experience the subtle shifts in geography from a different perspective. What from a car looks straight and flat is really lightly curved and undulating under the hot, edgeless sky.

Father's Day ride in central IllinoisI’ve done well over a hundred miles since I flew in last Friday, logging time with my father after work and with some of his cycling buddies while he’s away. Father-daughter bonding time well spent (although I’m getting real sick and tired off all this heat. I don’t mind pain, but I can’t stand being warm!).

I timed my yearly trip perfectly. Monday, the local bike shop hosted a Liv/Giant event bringing cycling women together for test rides and a little bicycle maintenance 101. I took a spin on one of these beauties: the Avail Advanced. Between that and joy rides on Dad’s Roubaix, I’m afraid I’ll have a hard time transitioning back to my darling cyclocross.

Oh well. At least I’m not stuck inside.

Snake Mountain

eamillikinLeave a comment

The nice thing about rainy days… is that if you time it right… you might just get the trail all to yourself.

A morning jaunt up Snake Mountain. A lunchtime nap on the summit. And a muddy, splashing hike back to the car.

What a view!

Liquid lunch and a view.
Yeah – I lost my raincoat, so I have to use my ski jacket.

 

Camp days

eamillikinLeave a comment

Where I grew up, “camp” was the word most people used to describe summer camps; places where they left their children for weeks or months at a time. In my family, camp meant a little red house on the banks of Lake Seymour. It’s too home-like to be a cottage, too rustic for a summer house. This place lies smack dab in the middle of cottage and home. It’s camp.

I just finished Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel, which has me daydreaming of far-off shores, but also reminded me of why I love it here – a little red house resting quietly on a lake in the Northeast Kingdom.Seymour Lake

At night, I sleep on the back porch with every window thrown open and the brook raging in my ears. The trees are our curtains. In the morning, I brew weak coffee in the percolator and drink it all day long. I sweep the front deck and set out the chair cushions. The lake is at our doorstep. She has her moods – rowdy in the morning and calm at night, or vice versa. She is wide enough that motorboats don’t cause a ruckus and deep enough that she never really gets warm. Even in July, her crystal-clear waters make you gasp. It’s best to just dive in.

Our main view is of the pointed hill across the lake. (It’s name is Elon, but I always think of it as Élan.) Behind it, the pointed peaks of Mount Westmore. Stretching like a snout from the hill into the water is Wolf Point. It certainly looks like a long canine muzzle, complete with a defined patch of conifers for a nose. I sometimes wish it didn’t look so much like a nose… I find myself staring at it when I really could be looking at other things –

Like the loons diving into the water, or the conical silhouettes of conifers against their round, deciduous neighbors.

After an evening run along VT Route 111, I cool my muscles the fastest way I can think of – by walking into the water. The water level is high this week, so it takes just a few steps to reach my thigh. I dive in. I don’t fully know how to describe the shock of submerging oneself in truly cold water. It’s as if your cells go into panic mode as your mind narrows to encompass one simple word (COLD) and one simple purpose (GET OUT YOU CRAZY GIRL). I don’t stay in for long; just a minute or two. But before I leave the water, I smile and touch my wet fingers to my lips. Thank you, I love you.

–

If you’re looking for me this week, I’m not around. I’m just spending a few days by the lake and nights on the porch of a little red camp. The brook will sing me to sleep.

For the Searchers –

eamillikinLeave a comment

My cousin shared this passage at her father’s 65th birthday. The poet’s name is James Kavanaugh, and while I don’t think his written words aged well, a ring of truth remains.

I share the passage here as a hello to all the other searchers out there.

I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know – unless it be to share our laughter.
We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.

For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.

Abel Tasman Coast Track
Abel Tasman Coast Track

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

eamillikin2 Comments

It seems like Haruki Murakami is popping up on every bookshelf these days. His work appears on bedstands, in backpacks, and on tongues more often than any other single author. (Except for my homie, F. Scott. He’s experiencing a revival. I wonder why…)

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

His pervasiveness is exactly why I’ve been avoiding him. I’ve rented out my book-space to other works, some good, some bad. And then a friend handed me Murakami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Since I both respect this friend’s taste and desperately needed a new book to read, I cracked it open.

All skepticism was dispelled immediately. Murakami writes candidly, artfully, and with (astonishing) humility. Right off the bat, he established his athletic hobbies as no big deal – marathons and triathlons are simply things he does because he wants to do them. He’s not in it for the glory or prize money or whatever. He’s in it to be in it. This is exactly the attitude I most admire in others. Simple, honest doing it for the sake of doing it.

I love the casual, shrugging way he tells the story of becoming a runner and, seemingly with the same breath, how he became a writer. Throughout the piece, running and writing weave together. The two activities are so thoroughly intertwined in Murakami’s life that it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

As a writer and runner who came to both writing and running in a gradual, almost accidental way way, I understand.

If I my pull just one passage to sum up the core of what I love about What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, it’s this:

“I didn’t start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn’t become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run-simply because I wanted to. I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change.”

Excuse me. I have some running to do.

–

Have you read Murakami’s memoir or novels? What did you think?

Who inspires you to get up and go?