The Passing of Time
It doesn’t seem that long ago that I used to joke with my good friend Ian Havlick that he was The Future. Since then, Ian has gone on to become an avalanche forecaster and a full IFMGA mountain guide. He has guided and heli-skiied in Europe, Iceland, Norway, Alaska etc. You get the picture. When I saw him last, I pulled him aside and said Ian, You’re no longer the future…You’re The Present.
And this brought about an unexpected existential shudder: If Ian was the present….what does that make me?
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Pianta Su!
An old mentor of mine passed away last week. He ostensibly died of heart failure, but I know it was more than that. Alcoholism had long been a part of his world and in the end, nearly everything was taken from him. He lost his job in part because of a howitzer accident; he lost his marriage and then his health. But I never knew him to have a broken heart. RG loved to ski, to look at snow crystals, to trigger avalanches, to put up new climbing routes on suspect rock. He loved to read books at the library and loved to argue about vocabulary and grammar. He occasionally reminded me that there is no such word as “forecasted”. “It’s the same as saying you were losted in the mountains,” he'd grin.RG had been an alpine and telemark ski racer long before we met. No one would ever confuse me with a classically trained ski racer and so early on in our friendship, RG gave me his copy of Ruedi Bear’s Pianta Su - Ski Like the Best. The book covers technique, conditioning, and what Bear called, The Racer’s Mind. This was maybe 25 years ago.
But the title always stuck with me.
Ruedi Bear explains -
Last summer my wife and I trained a bunch of top American racers high up in the Italian alps in a little place called Alagna. At the same time about twenty little Italian snow devils arrived, none of them more than fourteen years old. They represented the Italian Junior National Team.
I’ve rarely seen youngsters as eager, spirited, and funny. Their coaches resembled them in spirit and emotional behavior. To say the least, you could hear them. For two weeks we heard them yelling and shouting, “Pianta su!, Pianta su!, Pianta su!” at their little kids in rhythmic and sometimes even dramatic voices.”
We later came to find that Pianta Su means Plant up! The coaches were yelling at the little Italian snow devils to plant their poles and get off their edges. More precisely - to plant their ski poles at the end of a turn and then unweight to get off the edges. Then either to step, or to set a lightly weighted edge for the next curve.
When I last visited RG at an inpatient facility, I brought the book back to him. Oh that book, he laughed. You were a fine skier. That book’s not about skiing.
How shall we be remembered? I know that many people will remember him for the howitzer accident. I will remember him as my friend.
