As our economy has contracted, I’ve begun to eliminate all the extra stuff that I had unconsciously been holding onto in the delusional belief that more stuff was evidence of prosperity or some other such rot. When I realized I’d spent over eight-thousand dollars to store a bunch of stuff that could’ve been replaced for about $500 it was time to adopt a new paradigm about stuff. You can’t take it with you, and at some point it just gets in the way. Deb says, “do, dump, or delegate,” so I’ve been trying to dump as much as I can ever since that lesson hit home. Light is right applies to more than just mountaineering.

Two months ago three decades of slides became the object of pruning. Been going through the boxes of seconds that I’ve held onto thinking I might use them some day. It’s been an interesting walk down memory lane, and completely underscores the stupidity of lugging around boxes of celluloid that were relegated to the dust bin long ago. If I were ruthlessly efficient I’d just toss the boxes into the trash, but the part of me that believed there was value in that film demanded I give every image a second look before tossing it.

One of the nuggets recovered is to the right. I was reminded of its existence yesterday when someone posted a thread on telemarktips about how hard learning to telemark is. There are lots of good tricks for learning to tele. My two faves are simple exercises to control the natural tendency of your hands to be in the wrong place. Someone once told me “if your hands are in the wrong place, your feet can’t do what they’re trying to do.” On the otherhand, when you’re learning to telemark, heck even after you’ve learned to telemark, falling is a regular experience so my advice to Butch was to recognize that falling is not failing, it’s just part of the telemark deal.

With that in mind, knowing how to do a should-roll turn can be an important safety maneuver. Above is a good example. Notice the excellent positioning of the hands, head and shoulder for sending this under appreciated trick. If you can get your hands and head to anticipate the correct movement, your body will follow.



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