1140, or Why You Can't Trust Numbers, So Here's a List of Numbers

By Eino Holm

The Pacific Northwest is a consistently misunderstood place.  It is home to cities with some of the lowest precipitation totals in the country: Yakima receives 8 inches in a year, Bend gets 11, Boise 12. It has vast arid regions, places bigger than some eastern states, where precip comes exactly as it does in the more famous deserts to the south.  Infrequent and mild winter snow, and periodic summer thunderstorms.  Monsoonal pushes don't happen this far north very often, and in summer, neither do Pacific systems.  Seattle, that northwestiest of Northwest places, is dry basically from the middle June to early October.  If you've ever lived there, or spent time there, you know it may not look like the dry of the desert, but little to no measurable precip falls in that time.  This year, it's the middle of October and I don't think it's rained more than a drip or two up there since June.

Oregon, Washington, and North Idaho. - Brandt and Ryan (The Owner), the only exactly repeated answer.

Is it still the Northwest if you can actually see the volcano?

The general consensus, though, is one of consistently gray, mopey skies, and torrents of water.  If a movie or tv show is set in Seattle, say, or Portland, the rain is always heavy, aggressive, and very visible.  That is not the case.  Nor are the rains aggressive.  They often are unrelenting and destructive in the Wettest Season, 15 Oct to 15 Feb; it will be raining, maybe 5 inches in a cycle, and without the perspective or a puddle or the feel of the water on one's face, it is perfectly possible to think it had already stopped raining.

Oregon and Washington. - Dr J, "Reverend Doctor Super Genius"

Even the boundaries of the PNW are passive-aggressively controversial.  In informal personal polling of random folks (okay, friends, family, and coworkers) and in somewhat partially official research (wikipedia and the internet), the most consistent idea is "Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, except, y'know, not all of it."  I am fiercely (well, not fierce, I'm Norwegian fer heck's sake) of the PNW, and I have lived in its heart and on its periphery.  From the lower Salish Sea Basin and the upper drainages of two small but high-flow Salish rivers to the desert of southern Idaho, the Mediterranean oak savannah of southern Oregon, and Ogden, Utah, not really the northwest at all but good for perspective, and I think all of the ideas are defensible.

From Donny BoBo* to that one place in Alaska. - Dino Voulaj

The most codified of the boundaries seem to be the Pacific, and the 42nd parallel.  Even those aren't wholly rigid.  The 42nd is utterly arbitrary and unnecessarily unyielding.  The ocean is, well, have you been to Brookings during a vintage January Chetco Effect? 80 degrees, fire weather, a bit like Calabasas.  Not northwesty at all.

Washington, Oregon except the Great Basin, Idaho north of the Snake, west of US 93. - Brother John

Definitely PNW

It seems everyone is trying to put their interpretation of the phrase into a solid quasi-national entity. We are so used to and governed by boundaries that any notion of fluidity makes people uncomfortable. I have heard from folks who grew up back east that the PNW is just the strip of land from the Cascade Crest to the coast, either because they heard the PNW is wet and that's where the wet is, or because it's a solid, knowable boundary. As with all things, knowable is one thing, and solid is another entirely. Medford is west of the Oregon Cascade Crest, but averages just 18" of water a year. Kellogg, Idaho, is 300 or so miles east along a sometimes boring I-90 from the crest, and at above 30", averages only a Yakima's year shy of Seattle.

West of the Rockies, from Tahoe to the Bering Strait. - Crimski

In The Good Rain, Tim Egan describes the Northwest as the "reach of the Columbia." This, finally, sounds somewhat sensible.  The Columbia, after all, is a World River.  Not as well known as the Ganges or the Mekong, nor as big, but it drains significant portions of one Canadian province and four American states, and minor portions of three other states.  The bar at its mouth is dangerous and deadly and utterly humbling and beautiful.  The highest point along its crest is, understandably, Columbia Crest, the highest point on Tahoma.  The river drains the western slopes of the Canadian Rockies, vast and semi-obscure plains, giant spires of granite and anger from Valemount, BC (which is, like, WAAAAAY up there) to Nevada, northwesternmost Utah, and the Tetons. So, again, another solid boundary that is not so solid.  In fact, one of the furthest points in the entire basin from the Pacific is, naturally, the headwaters of Pacific Creek in the Teton Wilderness, well east of the Teton range itself, at a unique spot where one creek separates into two creeks that drain into different oceans.  This is Wyoming, obviously, which has for its eastern geography plains that are part of the Great Plains.  The Plains owe their arid existence to the Rockies, which are obvs east of the west which is OW MY HEAD.

West of where all the scrubby landscape begins. - Taylor

Are we looking out of the PNW into the Inland NW? (Screenshot of Mission Ridge's well-placed summit cam.)

This is my central problem with the idea of boundaries.  Vague and hard to defend.  Unnecessary, as we all came from the same ancestor, which to me suggests commonality of purpose and need, our perpetual and deadly desire to prove that wrong aside.

Cascadia.  - Dustin

The point? Other than truly enjoying good debate silly argument, it's skiing.  The American portion of the PNW has around 45 ski areas.  Some big, some little, some famous, some, well, most folks don't know Rotarun from Rotorua.  (I see you raising your hand in the back, New York.  You win. 52 ski areas, according to the NSAA.)  As we shift borders around for one reason or another, the number rises and falls.  Someone in passing mentioned Sun Valley isn't PNW, but Bogus is.  Trouble with that is that I can see the same peaks from the ridgelines of each mountain.  But then again, saying Bogus is a Rocky Mountain ski area kinda rattles my teeth a little, cos BoyCee just feels absolutely nothing like Albuquerque, and yet they'd be categorised together if we took everything literally.  Peakbagger says Brundage is in the Rockies, and Tamarack is in the Columbia Plateau, but you can see each ski area from the other on a clear day.  So, since categories are kinda silly, I'll just stick with the simplest answer: Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, and, like, one small part of California cos I want to and also volcanoes.  Major continental ranges and rivers are part of multiple regions.  Rather than solely defining the region, I'd say they simply play a part.  Definitely a big part, but they never tell the whole story.

As much as I'd like Southern Idaho to also be a part, I don't think it is. - Jake

Which finally brings me to a conclusion of sorts.  I was riding Chair 2 at Bogus the other day, Summer Only Riding Park Closing Day, with a remote-worker guy from some to-me-unknown place.  He was asking all sorta questions, and being me, I could not help but answer them honestly.  This is to say I hemmed and hawed and told him to define his terms more acutely.  "Does Bogus get many powder days?" begs for clarification; how much is a pow day? "Eight inches or more," he said, surprisingly confidently.  I mean, I've skied "powder" that was three inches overnight, and it outskied some ten inch days, but whatever, yeah, let's just pick a random number.  At Bogus, not many.  

All of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and Montana and Wyoming might be. - GMRII

Not just potatoes.

At any rate, he also asked if I could compare Bogus to Tamarack.  (Bigger, and smaller at the same time.  Like so many things.  Srsly, can you actually not figure these things out from just skiing? That's how I know these things, and I don't have the privilege of moving around at will while holding down a job.)  I took him at his word and said, simply, that they are different.  They require different skill sets, and if you've the money for new or the patience to buy used, different gear.  He tried to drill down on the exact size again, and when I said Bogus has over 1000 more skiable acres than Tamarack, he seemed surprised.  (He also had never heard of Baker, so maybe I'd set my bar too high.)  Bogus is bigger than Sun Valley, too, also, even with the new expansion.  I find this sorta underdog-punching-up scenario cool, and I relish the opportunity to share such things with folks who don't already know such things.  I don't know why, but it gives me some significant satisfaction to see a little brain-gear smoke out the ears when I say "Mt A has a higher base elevation than Bachelor." 

 Didn't you ask that last week? - Chris

When I got home, I looked for a published list of PNW ski areas by size, and did not find one.  Some other blog or mag from way back or other random collection of 1s and 0s might have something, but herewith is what I could find from surprisingly unverifiable Wikipedia articles and ski area website infos, with any ties alphabetised to pretend I'm not biased, and maybe a comment or two:

- Bachelor, 4600 skiable acres, when it's sunny.
- Schweitzer, 2900
- Bogus, 2600, on weekends and if you aren't afraid of a little willow-whipping in your pow-slash routine.  Seriously, just try it.  Almost all of it goes, and the parts I can think of that don't are right under Chair 6, so Patrol can find you and people can yell really helpful things from the chair like "That's a creek you're stuck in!" or "Hey! You're almost there!"
- Crystal, 2600
- Sun Valley, 2400, but that's after a very recent expansion and includes Dollar, which is a small bit of marketing shammery.
- 49 North, 2325
- Hood Meadows, 2150, and like Bachelor, that is only when it's sunny.  These Cascade volcanoes have a way of being stormy for days or weeks or months (1999) at a time.
- Mission Ridge, 2000
- Snoqualmie Pass, 1994, the combined total of 4 actual ski areas, one of which--Hyak--is rarely open, and which can only be fully connected by car or by paragliding off Denny.  Also, "Summit-at-Snoqualmie" is just artificially fancy.  East to west, it's Hyak, Ski Acres, Snoqualmie Pass, and Alpental. Regular-sized marketing spammery.
- Brundage, 1920
- Mt Spokane, 1704
- Timberline, 1685, but that's combined with the former Summit Pass Ski Area, which Timberline recently purchased but which is not yet connected without creative skiing, and which also is maybe never fully skiable because (according to a dude I talked to on Palmer who totally had an Employee Jacket and spoke with what felt like much authority) the Forest Circus doesn't allow them to run Jeff Flood while Palmer is also running.  Also, like, when them Pacific cycles is slamming the side of Wy'east, Palmer is buried, and when the Palmer chair itself is melted out and runnable, the lower mountain is melted out to dirt, mostly.  So, maybe a lot of marketing scammery.  The views from Palmer and the Magic Mile are downright righteous, though.  No marketing needed.
- Silver Mtn (Some still call it Jackass, cos, why not?), 1600
- White Pass, 1402
- Soldier, 1150
- Stevens, 1125
- Pebble Creek, 1100
- Tamarack, 1100.  This tie is an interesting one.  Both ski tall and narrow, with some real challenge in the woods when you know where to go.  Beyond that, they have almost nothing in common save that they are both, indeed, ski areas in Idaho.
- Lookout Pass, 1023, expanded this year and with plans (and, I think, the Okay from whomever or whatever) for more.
- Anthony Lakes, 1000
- Baker, 1000.  I'll pause here to let you decide whether or not you believe that one.  I love Anthony Lakes without any qualification, but in my mind, I can fit the entire place within the confines of the front side of Pan Dome at Baker. Then again, my entire point here is that definitions and numbers don't tell the whole story.

Views, a Riblet triple, Abies lasiocarpa, good snow, lesser-known mountain range? I'm in. (Anthony Lakes, photo by Snowsnapper, public domain.)

- Mt Hood Ski Bowl, 960
- Lost Trail, 900.  Hey.  It's got at least 13 turns in Idaho.  And besides, it's within the Reach of the Columbia.
- Hoodoo, 800
- Kelly Canyon, 640, sadly, no longer serviced by the legendary homemade Riblet lookalike they built from copied, possibly stolen, schematics.  Kelly's is now open Sundays, and according to my source, who like, knows the new owner cos bikes or maybe Rexburg is a small town; there might now exist within the creek drainage alcohol, which if one is so inclined, could be supped for the purposes of mild intoxication, known in many circles as "a good buzz".
- Mt Shasta, 635 as of this winter with the new Gray Butte chair.
- Willamette Pass, 555, with the additional claim (for now) of having the only 6 pack in Oregon, and with the dubious and maybe not measurable "steepest groomer in the US", RTS, which supposedly overtops 50 degrees. Might need to head there some day.  Or ask my niece at U of O for a report.  She's from Colorado, and as everybody knows, when you list skiing, Colorado is Number One.
- Loup Loup, 550.  I've ridden their chair, but never been to Loup Loup.  Think about that.
- Pomerelle, 500, with some rad orographic snow showers if the flow is right.
- Bluewood, 400.  I just have to point out here that I love literal names.  Bluewood is in the forests of the Blue Mountains.  Perfect.  I also love scientific binomials that are just double names--tautonyms, apparently--like Pica pica and Alces alces.
- Warner Canyon, 300.  Or 200, but as I pointed out above, it's surprisingly challenging to verify these numbers with my limited researching skills.
- Cottonwood Butte, 260, the largest (claimed) area without a chairlift.
- Hurricane Ridge, 250, but according to the kids I worked with at Baker who grew up in Port Angeles, it's like, totally not about the inbounds, man, it's like, endless and stuff.  One of those kids is, like, a big cheese at Baker now.
- Mt Ashland, 240, or 220, or, like, lots more cos the whole peak is skiable and accessible from either Windsor or Ariel and it only takes a little skate along FR20 or even just a quick walk back through the lot from the bottom of the Void.  This, then, brings up the whole challenge of understanding Skiable Acreage in the first place.  It feels like ski areas just guess and then try to defend either through repetition or a shoulder shrug.  We spent three winters at Mt A, and while I don't think it is a huge or even mid-size place, it felt bigger to me than Anthony Lakes does.  My perception is by no means perfect, I know.  Maybe some joints just count cut runs and others count every last feather of snow within sight?
- Spout Springs, 200, on pause while an operator is sought.  Fingers crossed.
- Ferguson Ridge, 170
- Bald Mountain, up near Pierce in 6C, not the one in 5B or the random pile of rock in NY, nor the totally awesome and totally not creepy at all piece by Mussorgsky, 140
- Magic Mountain, again, the one in 2T, not the one in VT, 120. There is an abandoned platter liftline across the road, which I don't think is included in the total, and rumours of replacing it with a used chair.  Or they might replace the carpet.  Who knows?  At any rate, Magic is cool and funky and up a long, very pretty draw with a nice Lodgepole right next to the top shack.  Not big, but that never matters. Also, this is not the smallest ski area in the PNW that has a chairlift.
- Sitzmark, 80; neither is this.
- Echo Valley, 70
- Cooper Spur, 50, home to the final Riblet installation ever.  That's worth something right there. Cooper is the smallest hill in the PNW with a chairlift, too, for good measure, too, also.
- Little Ski Hill, 50
- Snowhaven, 40

- Rotarun, 15
- Badger Mountain, 10
- Blizzard Mountain, some acres.  Can't find numbers.  It's a platter and one groomer. Guessing between 5 and 20, but like most folks, I do not know by looking what an acre actually is.

Boise, City of Trees. Tree City USA award recipient for 44 years.  That's a lot of trees, cos allegedly Boise! was the cry from Frenchist trappers back in the day, and like, "les bois" means trees, and so does PNW, so there.  Bogus Basin is the highest, furthest, most elevationary point in the photo. (Credit: Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce, via flickr.)

* Boise.  That's what Angel means when he says Donny BoBo.  It's, like, funny.


pps:
"With a base elevation of 6300', Mt Bachelor offers the highest base elevation in the Cascades. Paired with its location on the eastern side of the Cascade Crest, the result is consistently high quality snow not typically found in the Pacific Northwest. 462" of snow falls during an average year."

- Found on the internet. A good example of confusion seemingly based in the need for things to be cooler than they are. Bachelor has the highest base in the Cascades, yes, and the highest summit, too, and plenty of great skiing and is huge, but while it is east of the Crest in the riverine sense, weather doesn't care. I have skied my share of borderline mank at Bachelor, and through at least two full-on rain events there. Also, not for nothin', both Anthony Lakes and Mt A have higher bases, they're just not in the Cascades. Mt A is even the first peak west of the official reach of the Cascades, which doesn't really mean anything either, but again, it makes you, like, think, y'know?

Bison bison

The death of culture

By Eino Holm

I used to think bindings were made in a shed like this by elves and their friends, the faeries.

My gut has been a little piqued of late.  I was not sure why, until I realised it must be a disturbance in the Force, because:

New doesn't mean better.

While perusing the new stuff at one of the local shops instead of riding the Tractor in this glorious fall weather like I would have been if my gut was less yucky, I learned that Salomon has discontinued entirely my favourite thing in the universe, after reducing it with a less-than-acceptable heel a handful of years ago.  After roughly 35 years of rotary-release security, Salomon introduced a new toe piece, which looks like some genius took their most complex, fidgety piece of engineering, the hybrid A/T Shift, and then removed all the utility.  I am no industrial designer, but I understand retail margin, and when you have a reliable, bombproof, proven piece of kit like the existing Driver toe, why not simply rejigger the AFD for this silly GripWalk nonsense and watch the dollars continue to roll in?

Step 1: Do nothing.  Step 2: ???

Over the years, I have skied or worked on hundreds of skis and bindings.  Maybe thousands.  If I can't tell you what a binding feels like, then someone over in die Bindungsländer did their job well.  If, say, I can remember watching a Völkl Kuro (dimensions: 1 milliones, 1 half milliones, 3 quarter milliones) fly out in front of me on Upper Bull in 32 new, with a just-mounted, set-to-spec Marker Griffon having toe-released not once, but TWICE, then I will write your company off entirely.  If the heel just feels extra move-y, like, say, that STH2 heel, but I like the overall experience, then it's one strike and we're still friends.  Same goes for AAAttack/AAAdrenalin toe, which, when the toe height was set to spec, would allow enough up-and-down movement, like scraping charcoal a grille.  Still skiable, but I (and a local industry cat who shall remain nameless) simply raised the toe height until the movement ceased.  No clue if it still tests out, but that doesn't matter.  Less ramp angle, as a side benefit.

I'm sure Abe is somewhere on my now 82-long list o' names. Or is it 93?

At any rate, this is obviously travesty.  If it was good enough for the venerable 747 in 1987 or whenever, why isn't it good enough today? The new Strive is wider you say? Don't care.  My boot is the same width.  The new toe is lower, you say? For a lower centre-of-gravity? Don't care.  In fact, I had to put a 6mm gas pedal under the last STH2 toe, so, no.

Genesis

Trig

Basically, all this newer better stronger faster marketing collateral is just words.  Those words make a bad song from a bad band.  As mere words, they make an even worse idea, like Tide Pods or the cinammon challenge, or Tesla.

Gas pedals for flat bindings.  Centre: 2mm, we'll call it within rider preference. Top: 6mm, annoying, but acceptable cos why not? Bottom: 12mm, what I'm afraid of.  The world was different in '93. Pumpkin for scale.

Overdramatic title from Tonic's classic 90s Drama-rock record, Lemon Parade, specifically the song "Celtic Aggression". I guess you had to be there.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Top 47 Skiing*

 * According to, like, Everyone.

1. Colorado

2. Like, Europe

3. Subaru

4. Whistler

I think this is Whistler from Blackcomb? 

By Mr Swordfish2 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115239019

5. Tremblant, QC

5. Sun Valley

5. NO, WAIT, COFFEE SHOPS

6. Mad River Glen, or not cos it's scary.

7. Kitzbuhel

7. NO, WAIT, DEER VALLEY

8. Vail. And a little place called Ahspen.

That John Denver's full of shit, man.

9. Rainier? Is that a thing? Should I get some bar-mode boots?

10. Stowe

11. Tucks, if you're like, hard.

12. Dubai

13. Pontoon I saw it on the YouTube

14. Pizza

15. Is Oregon near Iowa?

16. Cairngorms, Scotland, which is like, in Europe or Andorra?

17. New Zealand

18. The waterparks of Jay and Jackass

Hashtag FirstDescents

19. JHole, but, like, watch out, cos skiing's harder there.

20. The Mangy Moose

21. You're Cody Townsend? Man, I'm so much better than you.

22. Somewhere in New Mexico

23. Chair 7 Extreme

24. I think it's in the Andes?

25. Hyland Hills

26. Pennsylvania

27. Huntah

28. Wait, Baker's not on a volcano?

29. Fur

30. Bode

Is this how you do it?

31. Fireball

32. There's TWO Cottonwoods?

33. Lindsey's gym

34. Alyaska? Aleksa? Amazon? Something like that.

35. Theo the Brave

36. Great Big Bear Valley Mountain Lake

37. Coopers, Anthony Lakes, Beaver, Pomerelles, Mission, Cannons, Saddleback, Sugars, &c, &c

38. Bjarne's Van I saw it on YouTube

39. Cuff alignment

40. The K12

26. KT22

41. Red Chair

42. French Fries

43. My Smartwool PhD socks have holes in the heels.

44. I can't root for Mikaela cos she didn't Gold 36 times.

45.  I can't even say Oslo, or Kristiania, let alone Altai.  Can we just say it's from Austria?

46. BURRITO, STAT.

47. Is it still skiing if you didn't drink beer?! 

Skiing beer.  Pretend you're at Hyak.

If you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes.  And besides, if you can ski here, you can ski anywhere.  If you aren't falling, you aren't trying hard enough.

hashtag onlyinwhereveryouare

Lookin up to watch the birds

By Eino Holm

The only person at my twenty-year reunion more cagey than Amy was my first ski buddy, Aram Scott.  I saw him a couple times, and by the time I got through the crowd to chat, he was out the door, a ghost in the window.  By the time I got out the door, he was simply a ghost.  

Aram was one of the few kids in school I grew apart from but for whom never felt anything other than the simple affection that comes from knowing we once were friends and could be again if circumstances allowed.  They never really did, and for that I am still sorry.  Aram and I made a lot of good turns together, (think "good for 11 year olds"), ditched both the ski bus and class together, played baseball together at least one year, the sort of important things kids do that in the long run don't amount to much other than basically everything.  I totally get why he snuck out of the reunion.  It was just a weird amalgamation of the same but different.  James Cline looked exactly like he did the day before graduation, late 90s fashion included.  Keri Nietsche looked like she hadn't aged, but had lost the awkwardness of youth.  My little crowd, Chelsea and Noël and Crosby and Aaron Mayer (ever the salesman, just passing through), we all showed our age.  Crosby and Chelsea have a family, a house on solid ground, and careers.  Noël is married, has been successful in one form or another since basically graduation, and lives somewhere around DC.  Her parents moved here to southern Idaho cos politics.  Mayer's some big cheese or at least long-tenured cheese at the Ford dealer.  I hope he still skis.  I remember one time in the Brown Bag Room (RIP) he and Shane were arguing about boots.  It was some time in this millennium and he still thought his rear entry boots were the shit.  Shane and I both assured him that they were, but drop the "the".

I hope Aram still skis.  Neither of us were all that good, but that's not what we thought.

Some friends are Pa.

Life has been challenging since moving to the desert.  First Ashland, then Ogden, then BoyCee.  These places don't feel permanent.  Ashland, specifically.  It felt like a permanent vacation, like I could blink and it'd be gone.  In truth it's me who's gone.  

By all reports, Ashland still stands, above the fog but below the peaks.  I couldn't convince anyone from town to ski with me more than a run or two, and at the hill, it felt like the best thing I could do was keep my head down.  The trees were inviting.  Southeast Right held better snow than the ski area itself.  Longer runs, too, and fewer people.  The quick skate back on Road 20 thinned the crowd to near non-existence.  The Void musta had too many satyrs or something.  I wasn't the only bloke making turns under those beautiful Shasta fir, but I never met anyone else in there.

My buddy Rob lives in Talent, a little downstream from Ashland.  He grew up in Steamboat, but grew tired of shoveling snow, and after a season tuning skis at Mt A during a bad winter, gave up on skiing entirely.  I will never understand, but I'm grateful to know him.  I just wish he still skied.  Dude's fit, mellow, and cynical.  The kind of skier, I assume, who'd kick my ass most of the time while maybe not making PSIA-sanctioned turns.  My type of skier.

I like good turns, but more than that, I simply like turns.

--

The low pole is a little brody.  Kinda like forearms in lieu of high fives in baseball, but like, in skiing.  

Catherine and I are at the bottom of some pitch out south of Crystal Lakes.  The pitch was steep, and the snow was good.  Worth the challenging skintrack.  We both made nice turns, natch, and I don't know if she went first, or me, but I do remember she ate some homemade raw crackers and homemade yogurt for lunch.  She shared some crackers and they were darn tasty.  Anyway, it was steep and sloughy, and when we finished our turns, equally as tasty as her raw crackers, I reached out with my pole and we made that satisfying *click*.

I said, reminiscent of Dax Shepard in Idiocracy, "I like skiing."  And I do.

Amy's ski buddy, Dad, at Buck Hill.  With those skis.

Some folks make an impression, and some folks make a difference.  

Kenny Tataku and I were never close, but the guy is responsible, almost single-handedly, for where I am at this exact moment, sunset just expired, food on the range, partner rolling her muscles and stretching after a hard day in the desert sun working in someone else's garden.  Kenny is the definition of ski buddy, someone easy to be around, who doesn't hold a grudge when you aren't around cos he's been there, seen how this life can take its toll even though we're all just chasing a good feeling.  

It was Kenny who said, "Go talk to Brad, and tell him I told you to."  I started the 1st day of December, '007.  The best job, without qualification, I've ever had.  Not for nothin', it was the only way I could have met Amy, my partner of longer than most marriages.  I often feel all sorts of things, negative or not, that I'd avoid, but to avoid those, we would have had to have never met, and that is just not okay with me.  I'll take whatever bullshit this uncaring universe gives if it means we face all of it together.

I was about 24, 25, Kenny and I were talking about technique.  I was trying to lay railroad tracks on the Back Traverse, failing at speed, and frustrated.  Kenny just said, "You're turning left with your right foot, and turning right with your right foot.  You can't.  The turns need to be a mirror of each other."  Something like that, anyway.  It made sense.  Load that cuff, let your inside leg follow, draw the knee to the inside of the turn, just glide back and forth, back, and forth.  The rest will work itself out.

It has.

Brad hired me on the spot, after I mentioned Kenny's name.  Brad said "Kenny taught me to tune, and he wouldn't send me a jerk or an incompetent."  Everything for me, today, draws from that moment.  The difference between a kid and a man, between guessing and knowing, between following orders and making one's own way.

--

It's a curse of good low-light lenses that every time you notice the sky on a storm day, it seems like the sun has just started to break through the heavy Cascade stratus deck.  Today, it's been raining since God knows when, and Dustin and I simply followed through on our plans.  We were gonna ski, and by God, we did.  I mean, d'uh.  That's what one does here in the PNW.  Or at least that's what we tell people.  I think it's '99.  That winter.  I could be wrong.

The snow wasn't great earlier in the day, but as the rain abates, the snow settles further and the surface water thins, and it gets better.  And better.  Dustin and I have a timeframe, and we just keep skiing until we have to head down.  Skiers' right of Green Valley is that choice, slarvy snow, each turn more effortless than the last.  People talk about Pisten Bullys and Champagne Powder Snow tee-em and yet here, some random day, the name of which I cannot remember, rained-on snow is all there is.  And it is glorious.

I don't remember what skis Dustin had, and it doesn't matter.  I'm 41 years old, and I still remember those turns, 98 or 99 or whatever.  I've forgotten a hundred deep days, give or take a 20 or 30, but skiing with a good friend in the rain, some clammy base layers and soaked socks, wax scraped entirely from our bases, that is irreplaceable.

You already assumed this is coming, but when we decided to head for the barn, knowing we had no more time in the frame, is when the sun decided to poke through.

--

My phone died on my 27th birthday.  Well, the battery ran out of juice.  You'd think I would not remember a specific day when my phone battery ran out of juice unless it left me stranded in a desert basin, somewhere in the eastern Mojave, sun beating down on my parched neck, canteen long since pierced by a vindictive roadrunner, but no, it's the top of Pineapple Pass, June of '008, with the whole ramp below me, Catherine making those turns you want to make when you are imagining this exact scene.  There was no danger, I had a charger in my car down in North Bend, and really I just missed filming the scene.  I usually didn't think of taking crappy flip-phone video, except for that day, and the dern battery died.

The turns weren't memorable for the type of the snow.  It was just June of a Good Snow Year, and not really anything else, and that snow is consistent.  I know the snow was good, because I absolutely love summer snow, but I don't remember the actual turns at all.  I remember the views.  I remember the pitch.  Chair Peak, buried Source Lake somewhere under the remaining snowpack. I remember the short skate back to Catherine's Outback.  I remember the Kuhl jeans I had waiting for me, the ones that looked out of style and felt great and still made me sheepish enough when wearing them that I sold them at a second hand store.  The pockets were wrong, or the legs too baggy, or the gray too gray, I don't know.  It's interesting to remember the jeans, who drove, the date, my phone, and not the turns, but there it is.  The crux of all this memory.

Pineapple Pass, Alpental.  Not June.

--

Amy was fast.  She had her GS boards on, natch, and it was a vintage PNW January drought.  (I've since confirmed with at least one other person, Ryan [the Owner], that this really is A Thing.) This time, I remember the snow.  It was. . .um. . .white, it covered the ground, and if used correctly, it was also fast, like Amy.  I am always fast.  They (well, Lisa and Bob, anyway) didn't call me Two Turn Eino for nothin'.

I don't think I knew she was behind me, and when she passed, I noticed.  Her GS boards were of suitable vintage, late 90s Salomon, that F$#@ You Red they used for their racing program.  Silly Prolink arms on the topsheet, my absolute favouritest bindings and yellow race plates.  She looked comfortable, arms low, eyes goggles to the fall line, helmet, well, on her head, I guess.  Almost 13 years later, I'm sitting at our dinner table, grateful for all the years and even the shit we've been through, no matter how high it piles or how rotten the silage was that the cows ate.

I do not, however, remember much about the run.  I remember Amy ripping past me when I stopped at the top of the Gulch, her hands forward.  In my mind, it was sunny, but so what if it wasn't?  The outcome is the same.  I know what she sounds like at 7 in the morning, a minute after the alarm goes off.  I know that if I find a good pic of a cute elephant baby on the flappy internet box, she'll squeal a bit and maybe be a shade happier than she was before.  I know that we'll fight about certain things, and that the fighting can hurt like hell and also make each of us stronger.  Individually, and together.

Amy isn't fast right now, and that's totally okay.  Her knees fight her, to the point where the docs say she needs some Ti upgrades and some UHMW poly, to where skiing isn't always the right answer.  This from a man, a stoic Norske, an arrogant Svenska, a silent Sámi, who for 41 years has thought skiing is always the right answer.  We age, we change, we hopefully grow.  We're old enough to start thinking about second acts.

--

Stina had to leave her house to The Former Guy.  She built the damn thing herself, including the chainsaw carvings.  It's a beautiful structure, open, comfortable, cosy somehow, set back a piece in the foothills, away from the road, invisible until you right underneath it.  We're from different places, different worlds, really.  That house, though, before TFG stole it, it's like I designed it, except I did not.  Wood for days, open, isolated, quiet, air to breathe and room to believe.

My earliest memory of Stina is somewhere long before the new Northway chair.  I was chasing her group, 18 years old, just then learning how to bum, bumping chairs for Jace, fighting off those demons we all seem to face.  Mind on everything except this moment, whatever this moment is.  We're down low in the draw below Spook that led to Lower Northway or I-5, moguls and icy spots and all those lichen-hung Abies.  (The new chair kinda changed things some.  The draw isn't quite the same.  The moguls are bigger, the hardpan easier to scrape clean.)  Stina had one of those hats, I don't know, fleece? Colourful, kind of pill-boxy, not hip at all.  Out of time.  It is the best illustration of Stina for me, style borne of force-of-will rather than some other asshole's idea of what is cool.  Not hip, and better for it.  She doesn't need your approval anyway.

I'm not lying when I say Stina Stringer is one of the best skiers, both freeheel and fixed, that I have ever seen, let alone skied with.  (In the vacinity of? At the same mountain as?)  That exit, the creekbed draining Upper Spook and the Horseshoe Cliffs and Paradise Bowl, before Pa widened it, it wasn't exactly smooth going.  Slackcountry, as some of the more with-it writers say.  Those shoulder-high moguls that never really go away until Mud Season.  Pa calls em Volkswagens.  Stina's crew were all experienced dudes, current and former bums, strong skiers, and she's the one who really got it done.  All five-foot-not-much and a buck-very-few, she was (still is, hopefully, once her blowed-up foot heals) the strongest and smoothest, by at least one order of magnitude.

I remember her gliding through the bumps, and I wondered, "Who does that?!" Knee not quite to the ski, cos even when tired, she still held her technique.  I wanted to do what she was doing.  That mythical, mystical turn.  Bending the ski through technique and strength, demurring when people say, "That looks haaaard," like they were some bumpkin who just learned what a freeway is.

To learn that a person such as her, sought after by many dudes, quiet when you don't know her, is also kind, giving, and loyal, well, sometimes people are good.  I am grateful for that.

--

I like good turns, but more than that, I like turns.

If memory serves, it's the 25th of February, '008.  Pa's birthday, number 60, to be exact.  He was probly working.  I missed 70 cos people are terrible drivers.  (Ma and Amy and my mother-in-law, Jane, all thought I should stay alive, that even skiing isn't worth fighting off 70 mile-an-hour cars driven by idjits in what really was a prime, deep, cold cycle.  Stina had to rub it in, of course.  I was pretending to tune a shitty bike in BoyCee while she was dropping the knee out South.  Stina's Chute, even, in the cold late-February sun on 8 or 10 or whatever had settled there.)  '008, that was a different story.  Same weather on the day, but it'd been a minute since there was any snow.  It was cold, chalky, that hero snow I can't get enough of.

Kupsis and I kept sprinting South, skating and booting quickly to whatever line we fancied.  Nothing could stop us, and I don't think I've skied much better faster on anything as steep.  Somewhere around the fifth or thirtieth lap, at the first gate, a strawberry blonde stranger asked "What's skiin' well?"  and I just spat, "Me."  I had been enjoying, more than usual, the alpine gear.  I was in my own boots, I think, not sure I actually had alpine boots right then, and on a demo Katana.  The first model, the one with the UHMW swallowtail that the mags all hated.  Glorious.  Ugly, like, in a good way.  That ski always had its nose vaguely up, and it was right in line with how I was feeling.  The snow was hardpan, but the good kind, like the dirt all the mountain bike mags used to sweat about back when there were actual mountain bike mags.  Confident, I'd call myself.  Arrogant, even.  She, this to-me-unknown skier, was with Sean, the Snowsports guy.  He mumbled something about my sense of humour and the, y'know, undeniable fact that yeah, I'm pretty good.  Mike and I booted up the Throne to the first gate with something more than urgency, and skated hard around the back.  Dodging those Abies lasiocarpa branches at speed.  Pretty much ran up the King.  Hazy sun.  At the top, I took a short breather.  I'd been fighting bronchitis for two weeks at that point, my lungs wheezing, only my anger and hubris allowing me full-speed South laps.

As I dropped my skis, she ran up the traverse as fast as Mike and I had, and I, I had to stop.  Sean was nowhere to be seen.  She'd dropped him outright.  She nodded, laughed a little, said her name was Catherine, and asked,

Well, Mr Confident.  Where you gonna go?!

The King.  If you know, you go.  Bluff suitably called, I went Hourglass, third shot skiers' right of the summit, the easy way.

--

Title from the classic Roger Miller tune, "Old Friends".  Willie did a handful of versions with different ol' friends.  Give 'em a listen.  I hope you'll like at least one.

Nothing good ever lasts

By Eino Holm

The lights are dim, kinda smoky even.  New Year's Eve, 1999, Crystal Mountain.  It's Noël, Chelsea, Peter, and me.  We're all acting like it's a normal night, that the world isn't going to end in a handful of hours, cos, well, why would it end on Pacific Standard Time if it didn't end, say, on Japan Central Standard Time earlier in the day?  We're all in various states of curiosity, though, if nothing else.  All around us are people we don't really know, even if we each know a handful of 'em a little bit in our own ways.  Peter and I had bumped chairs all Summer, Peter first with his head eight or twenty times on my 18th birthday back in June when the two of us were building that old, elevated, loooong ramp on Old 3 from whatever crunchy corn Bruce Engdahl brought up from the Back Traverse.  I don't think Peter'd ever really spent much time around chairs.  Maintenance was running the beautiful ol' '63 Riblet double to find any kinks they hadn't found during the short spring fix-it season.  For whatever reason, Peter couldn't grasp the fool-me-once adage.  I'd felt bad.  Anyway, this night, six months later, it was both light and dark, quiet and loud, quick and slow.

I asked Kim Rausch the next morning, just to confirm, and she said the two booms had been a 50 sack and a hundo.  Or whatever jargon she used.  ANFO, that slow-burn explosive that so nicely dovetails with a stick or two of DynoAP for avy control, makes one heck of a shockwave when Patrol sets off about 45 kgs at once.  I've experienced this twice, and the second was no less surprising than the first.  Kim said that even though they were on top of 70-odd inches of good snowpack that they'd controlled all season, they still brought up dirt.

Walking around the base area was a little surreal, orange light and crazed locals and all.  Griffin Eshpeter slid by us on the slickery* Boulevard heading down, fireworks already all boomed and ANFO all burnt, smoke still hanging above Silver Creek.  Maybe it was Alex Kemp, doesn't matter.  They didn't crash, and I don't know that whoever it was was actually drunk, despite appearances.  They were a year behind me in school, but my age.  (That shouldn't have mattered then, and it certainly doesn't today.)

The light slowly faded, and by the Family Cabin at the bottom of the Boulevard, it was a normal Winter night.  We shared some Champagne, or at least bubbly; I don't know where it was from.  The elkers and White River ghosts watched us from the trees, digging for food under the snowpack.

-

Lisa leans out from the shack at the top of New 3.  "GO TO SIX NOW!!" she says.  Stina and Catherine and Steve Holmsen and I don't wait.  We point it.  Six has been closed all day, and there's a break in the weather after puking for who knows how long.  I don't know it for sure, but I think Baugher wants some skier compaction before the cycle gets going again.  It's one of those glorious March days, cool and showery, and the snow piles up more than you think.  Steve and I ride up in the quiet.  Baugher is bumping chairs at the bottom, Patrol Director name tag and thirty years of service notwithstanding.  His assistant, Brent, is up top.  He's grinning as he does, crooked tooth and general good nature.

Brent pulled me over once, seventh grade, but I dodged a ticket.  I argued with him like a good 12 year old.  I'M IN CONTROL BRENT WHY YOU PICKIN ON ME.  He was polite and firm, like Noël told me to be with the missionaries in Ogden.  "You were out of control, son.  I know it when I see it."  The difference between being able to change direction, but not stop, and being able to stop on command.  I don't know that I really understood that until I was bumping chairs myself years later.

Stina and Catherine and I wait at the bottom of 6 a good ten minutes for Steve while he digs under the line for his phone, somewhere up near the Punk Rock.  Stina's yelling, as though he can hear us from this distance.  HURRY THE (*&$)@#(*&^#$(*&#^$(*&#^(*#&$^(*&  UP STEVE ITS JUST A PHONE THIS IS SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW and then he finally finds it.  He reaches his hand up like some kinda treasure hunter, and then heads on down in that albatross stance of his, turns solid, round, expert, and just a little bit goofy.  Catherine and I ride up this time, shoulder to shoulder, still quiet for these two irreplaceable runs.  So unique in the midst of all that year.  114 days on snow that time, and these two runs right under Crystal's marquee stand out like the first day driving Blue by myself, power sliding skidding out of Fed Forest by the ol' hollow-truss bridge at almost 90 cos, well, yer 16.  How else does one drive at 16?

--

Sometimes it takes years to build a community.  People on this here internet always talk bout building one, but really, you can't.  They happen, quietly and otherwise, through shared experience, or shared value.  Some are as transient as the snow they're built on, some are as durable as the pavement connecting the houses and schools.

Most ski areas, the good ones anyway, this takes a few weeks or months.  Maybe the bonds are tenuous, and years later you sit bolt upright in bed and wonder just where did Food Service Ryan With the Earrings and Goofy Grin go?  It's been 21 years since you lived together accidentally, and you'd long forgot.  Sometimes you wake up in your house in a different time zone, with a friend sleeping in her van in your driveway, boyfriend beside her.  It's funny calling Stina in her 50s and Martin in his 60s "boyfriend and girlfriend", but there you go.  I've known her for over 20 years, and we've been good friends for almost all of that.  I skied up next to her and the Former Guy and Kenny Tataku in line at the bottom of 9 headin South, and she looked down at my skis and said, "Do your skis fight?"  I mumbled something about Ma and Pa bein Scandihoovian and how on a map, Norge is on the left and Sverige is on the right, but basically, she's been there ever since.  I appreciate someone who can joke at my expense.

Eino's car fights with itself.

The dark closes in quickly at the bottom of any valley, killin' woods or not.  The White has those and more, deep cover and crunching elk hooves and the ghosts of who knows how many.  Only a handful of folks in modern times have ever really called it home for life.  It's a ways to town, twenty or more miles just to the bottom of the hill.  The local tribes hunted up here, for elk and deer and whatever else they looked for.  Millennia stretch to epoch, with the alternating quiet and violence of natural life interrupted by snow and fire and flood and lahar.

In peak Pineapple, there's nobody to help but neighbours, conservative-value cliché aside.  Filling sand bags at the Fire Hall, watching a friend's dog if she's stuck in town, loaning your shovel and your time to throw logs from one side of the bridge to the other on the Greenwater to keep the lumber roiling downstream from blowin it out.  It isn't always life-and-death.  In point of fact, it rarely is.  Sometimes you just sit on the floor with Jen's awesome old lab mutt and scratch the poor girl's ears and think out loud.  Discuss the verities, and head home when it's bedtime.  Wonder what those noises are outside the door.

Usually they're just the elk.

Characteristic bull elk glare, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Crystal is known for its view, something I took almost for granted for most of my time there.  Tahoma, obvs, but Pahto and Loowit, and sometimes all the way to Kulshan.  Stuart and the Wenatchee Range, the Castle, Fifes Peaks, Aix, Goat Rocks, countless smaller hills.  The White almost five grand below, silent at this distance.  The upper White isn't this dramatic, punchy place full of toothy giants.  It is home, though, time and distance and interlopers notwithstanding.  Just over the ridge, in the next small drainage, a couple small subalpine lakes sit quietly under some impressive rock bands, with a nice mess of Abies lasiocarpa for company.  Crystal is not known for tree skiing, even though it should be.  Stina and Kenny showed my scores of little lines, whether before we officially met when I was just the 18 year-old kid chasing one or both of them, or when we were there together and on purpose.

One run, not really tree skiing, per se, but with trees, I snuck between some hemlock and dropped about three or four feet onto what I had assumed was a puffy, ten-inch-thick pillow of angel hair and unicorn dreams, just to find it was two inches on top of a rock-hard ankle biter.  My back has not been the same since.  I don't know that Stina or Catherine really knew that my life would be different after, that my chiro bills would run into the many thousands and my identity as a bum would slowly winnow until I'm in a different drainage entirely.  A desert, really.  I can't say at all that my ganked back and fussy ribs led me here, but nothing is ever isolated.  In the rental shop Stina showed me some stretches I still use today, and Catherine did some energy work that I as a cynic don't really believe in, but still absolutely appreciate and cherish.  Sometimes someone giving a shit about you means more than anything else in the world possibly can.

-

Moving day is hard, really no matter where you are.  Sometimes it's physical, sometimes emotional, sometimes spiritual.  Sometimes it's the last you'll see of someone.  I keep in contact with a handful of people from the various hills.  Some have moved on, some unfortunately have passed on.  I wish them well, mostly.  Even that one jackass who hit on Amy in front of me, and then had the stones to come to my shop for basework.  At least he could make a good beanie.  My other good beanie--besides my favourite that I can't wear here because BoyCee people just cannot let go of BSU--was also knit by someone I haven't spoken to in years.  Kind of an odd reminder, each of these.  These pieces of people, real or felt, keep the past nearby.

We headed down the Boulevard that last day, mid-April of '011.  We'd had a couple beers, shared some nachos on the tiny deck of Rafters The Bullwheel Rafters with Sean, absorbing the late April Sunday evening and the warmth that surrounded us, laughed at some jokes, wondered at the ethereal among the fir and hemlock, generally acted as though it was another day, and, well, every day is just another day, I guess.  No controlling that.  Haven't seen Sean since, though I hear tell from time to time.  Abbie, Sam, so many people whose names I forgot or didn't bother to really know.  Sam, unfortunately, passed away this winter.  The details aren't important, but dammit, I wish he could have caught a break.  He and I started working for Brad the same day, tuning skis and generally tryna avoid responsibility.  We were never close, but he's a good dude and we got along really well.  We joked about entering the Powder 8s on our teles just to do a single Powder 8, but full-length.  He fell into a crevasse doing sweep on the Emmons Glacier as a climbing ranger, and never quite recovered.  His seizures got to the point where he thought speed-flying was a good idea cos it was fast, and he only had a minute or so from start to finish where he was in danger.  He still had to be airlifted a couple times.

Sam was rumoured to be a better-than-decent cat driver, and for a ski area, he was definitely a fairly hard worker.  Stina said the last time she talked to him, he was figuring stuff out, and had been seizure-free for quite some time.  Some sort of medical progress or surgery had helped out, and things were looking up.  His passing was accidental, and yet it wasn't all that surprising.  It hurt more than I expected, that understanding that none of us really controls anything.  I had made peace with the knowledge that either Pa or Stina would call, matter-of-fact as they both are, and I still almost threw up.  Sam deserved better, or at least to be taken while he was chasing some adrenaline high.  I always hoped he'd find some help, the kind that he actually did, and that his seizures and his luck would both improve.  That he'd find another lady, someone who'd love his dog, someone like Abbie, but like, not, at the same time.  I hoped we'd actually one day get to skate out to the Boxcar, and drop in.  Sam first, me following.  He'd go left, make his one right-hander, then I'd jump and we'd make that tandem, knee-dropped left, then I'd finish with my one right-hander, and we'd ski off knowing whoever it was we thought we were competing with so long ago was long gone, and it was just cold smoke off the top of the snow, some mountain hemlock, a little breeze, and a lifetime of stories.

-

Almost as an afterthought, we dropped by Sean's trailer that last night.  It was closing in on dark, and a handful of instructors and random folks were milling about drinking brown bottle beer and wondering just what came next. We'd already technically closed that year, but as these things seem to go, Crystal kept reopening for weekends until they either ran outa steam or snow.  We left before that happened.  

As parties go, it wasn't.  Just some tired, sad folks slowly aging out of the scene, looking for grander dreams or a way out of the flatland life.  Either chasing a dream of bumming from here on out, or of finding some real motivation and a "real" career.  I certainly wish there was some way of forgetting the emotional damage and the physical toll a life of bumming actually exacts.  I wish I could show up for closing day, wear a cape or whatever and throw a backie off the end of the pond skim, and slither into whichever cave I'd find for the summer, but I cannot.  What might have been, I guess.

As Closing Days go, it wasn't.  Everyone else had already left, LB and Abbie and really anybody, and it was just me and Brad, and then just Brad.  Amy and I met my buddy Jason on the side of a road in Oly and then it was foot-down until Exit 19 in the late afternoon, catching up to Pa and Ma and unloading the trailer they had pulled out of Enumclaw at 5 am.  Ashland, OR is such a different place than Greenwater, WA.  It's a small town, comparable to Enumclaw, but it feels like a city.  Shakespeare and folks from The Bay and fancy hotels.  Lithia Park wedged between million dollar houses, but even with all that money, there are cougars and bears in the trees and chupacabra on the highway.  Eleven years have passed, some successfully and others, well, I speak for both of us when I say I'm happy they are passed.

The nachos we shared with Sean that night weren't memorable, but I still remember them.  The nachos Marquez and his ex shared at the old Caldera dive under 99 the night before we left Ashland three years later weren't any better, but I still remember them, too, also.  Mt A hadn't opened that year, not even for a day just cos, so that quiet night with a couple beers was all that we really got.  Closing Day can border on spiritual some years, to the point where I can't stomach missing it and I also can barely stomach participating.  I grab my Closing Day Poles from behind the door, the ones I got from my Father-in-Law all those years ago, and hope to ski in a button-down and sunscreen and maybe, if we're lucky, some real good spring corn.

Eino on Closing Day, with his Closing Day Poles, 2022

The light is dim, kinda smoky, even.  Catherine and I are at the top of Rex, a couple years before that silly gondola.  It's chilly, the April corn freezing slowly in the waning warmth.  The sun sets quickly, as it does when one doesn't want it to.  The lifts are silent, unlit.  Green Valley is dark, disappearing quickly, and we don't dawdle.  The freezing corn snow is skiable, 100 or so days on snow so far that year.  (4th of July would be 114.)  My legs are solid.  Quads and hams and calves ropy from dropping the knee at speed 10 or 12 days a week.  It's embarrassing, really, but in the 14 years since, I have never been as fit.

To be honest, I don't remember the turns.  I say the snow was skiable, and it had to be cos we made it down, but Catherine's like a PSIA Level 5 Alpine and Level 7 Tele, and I'm, like, pretty good, so skiable is relative.  Six inch sun cups in 4th of July fog is skiable, too, if you want it to be.

It's the light I remember.  The White, milky in the early spring runoff, down below to the west.  The dim, smoky sunset red and black.  The orange flashed and faded, and then we just had to turn tail and run.  Neither of us had lights.  These moments are always there, as are the old ones watching from the subalpine fir atolls.  I don't know if they're benevolent, and I don't know if it matters.  We'll all join em, one at a time.  

Abies lasiocarpa atoll, courtesy of The Gymnosperm Database

Interesting resources for them killin' woods:

https://conifers.org/

https://www.michaelkauffmann.net/ 

*Pa coined this term.  Don't argue.

Title from Iris DeMent's "Our Town"