Skiing in Japan is everything people say it is. Deep, light, fluffy and abundant snow. The food is incredible pretty much everywhere - including in the convenience stores. Learning to unwrap the 7-11 onigiri involved a lot of enthusiasm, fumbling, humor, failure, and satisfied tastebuds; I never quite got the hang of it, and if that’s not an apt metaphor for Westerners in Japan, I don’t know what is.

Japan is courteous, welcoming, surprisingly affordable, and so well organized and clean that you wouldn’t know, walking down the streets of Tokyo, that you are in the most populous city in the world. And the skiing: What a treat to be able to wake up without the pow day hysterics you find in the U.S., arrive in polite and orderly line at the gondola, and enjoy a lunch of delicious ramen or Japanese curry amidst hours of mostly unimpeded powder skiing, and THEN head to an onsen to rejuvenate, soak the soreness out of your muscles, and find a space of total internal presence and calm before getting a legitimate night of sleep…and then doing it all again. And did I mention the food?

Japanuary 2023 was my 40th birthday present to myself, and it lived up to the dream. Really, it’s still the dream; I would probably choose to go back there before skiing anywhere else.

My favorite thing about Japan, however, was not any of the above; what struck me most was the reverence present in every place. Everywhere you go, you are reminded of the deep spirituality embedded in the culture - Buddhist temples, statues, and shrines are abundant, from large ancient buildings that FEEL connected to something bigger, to a tiny nook on a street corner with a stone buddha and a candle. Respect is central in Japan, and although I know the obsession with courtesy and propriety can leave people very lonely, it also makes for a profoundly calm energy, even in a city as massive as Tokyo. After a week, I could feel my nervous system settle down several notches, and I slept the best I have of all the places I’ve been (could have been the bell-to-bell pow skiing, too). When I got off the plane in Seattle after my trip, I experienced the most jarring, visceral, unsettling culture shock I could imagine. Everything felt dirty, crowded, and chaotic, and it took me a week to acclimate.

If I could spend every winter in Japan, I would. And, for me, skiing anywhere is an escape, a source of joy, a way to commune with nature and to enjoy the cold, a rush of adrenaline and something that gets me right into my body like almost nothing else I’ve ever done. It’s something that connects me to gratitude for my past - my mom introduced me to it - and it’s something I share with my partner. It populates some of my most cherished memories; it’s part of who I am.

Mt. Ashland, our little local mountain had a projected opening date of…three days ago. We are in a warm, wet cycle here - happening more and more often - which means lots of rain but little freezing. This is becoming a ubiquitous story in the ski world - a sport that depends on the weather and is limited by geography and a high entry and participation cost doesn’t seem to stand much of a chance in the years to come. Although Japanuary is always on my mind, I wonder how much longer it will last, especially as it becomes clearer all the time that humanity likely isn’t going to change our behaviors fast enough to save Winter.

And, complaining about the decline in skiable days is the definition of privilege.

Is privilege inherently bad? I don’t think so - what’s problematic is the unequal distribution of it. Of course, if everyone had access to what they needed and wanted, privilege as we know it would cease to exist. Perhaps the real problem with privilege is that it is rooted in scarcity; it is the material expression of an unequal distribution of value, applied to human beings.

While we work in our small and large ways to change that paradigm, the least we can do with however much privilege we have is to try to do some good for the world - and if along the way, we save the things we love for ourselves, even better.

You can find other essays and links to podcasts and other media, learn more about PLAYfree, and get in touch with me, by visiting the website. Just click the button below!

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Train of Thought, Part 3: A Society in Fight or Flight | 12.16.25

Abundance is the state of there being enough, and it’s at least possible to imagine a world (or maybe just a community, or a group of friends) in which that is the dominant paradigm. And, while there are people out there holding that vision and working to make it so on a material level, it would be the understatement of the year to say that it is an uphill battle.

The ideals of equality (everyone receives the same, like rights) and equity (everyone receives what they need, like education or medicine or support) get couched by the bosses of the system as “socialist” and “extremist” as if caring about the people around us is the most disgusting, offensive, and outrageous thing we could possibly do. How dare I want everyone to be fed, educated, cared for, and safe from violence, cruel rhetoric, and bigoted policy! I must be deluded if I believe that everyone deserves to have equal rights, freedom of personal choice, and corporeal sovereignty. What’s wrong with me?! I must be one of those “left-wing extremists.”

While I think that’s a lazy definition that reflects a lack of critical thinking and curiosity about who I might actually be as a person, we do live in a world of labels. If believing in equity, equality, integrity, compassion, the common good, and saving the planet through stewardship of Nature (the ultimate common good) makes me “radical,” so be it. I’ll wear that label and not lose sleep over it. The problem, however, is not in labeling itself, but that it is limiting.

No person is just one thing; what people of all ideological viewpoints do is slap a label on someone – often from a place of emotional trigger or ideological parroting – and then that person can never be anything else. In this way, we put people in a box from which it is really hard to ever escape. In our paradigm of either/or, there is little room for nuance, especially when there is ideology and emotion involved.

Making up my mind about something that taps into my emotions is easy, which is why appealing to people’s feelings works so much better than appealing to logic. Almost everyone can make an emotional decision; when I’m in an emotionally heightened state (also known as sympathetic nervous system activation, or fight/flight/freeze), things get very either/or. Things are AMAZING, or TERRIBLE; that person is LITERALLY MY BEST FRIEND or THE ACTUAL ANTICHRIST.

As a society, we spend a lot of time in sympathetic activation. The part of the human brain that deals with emotion is on a seesaw opposite the part that operates with logic and reason; when one is high, the other is low. Today, the business of driving people’s decisions by appealing to their emotional triggers is booming, and it makes sense; base emotional appeal is low-hanging fruit, and we like nothing better than getting paid a lot for the minimal amount of effort. If we can get ahead of everyone else while doing it, even better – Capitalism, baby…

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