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November/December 2007 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Top wildlife stories Feature: Legion halls Feature: Northern food Feature: Ice road The Inside Story Editor's Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

Every year, I take my sons skiing in the Canadian Rockies near Canmore and Banff. Spring skiing in the mountains alters me: I want to drop everything and just be a ski bum. I usually ski at Sunshine Village Ski & Snowboard Resort, just west of the Banff townsite, a pleasant drive in the river valley that boasts elk and bighorn sheep, glacial waterfalls and mountain walls that almost brush your car mirror. It’s beautiful country.

Anticipation builds as the gondola climbs and I gaze at dark evergreens under bright peaks, Goat’s Eye Mountain, Delirium Dive and Angel Traverse. At the top, I point my skis downhill, start carving my first soft turns in the powder at the edges, and poof! my troubles vanish like mist, way up there in the snow massifs and dolomite peaks.

Moving down white moguls, I forgive my minor enemies. My head clears wonderfully. At the bottom of the run, I boast a goofy grin. All the “lifties” working the quad chairs are burned almost black by the sun, all wear silver shades and all hail from New Zealand and Australia. I ski right in — no lineups on a weekday — and greet them as if we are long-lost friends.

On my last trip, however, I noticed that I was one of the few humans left actually strapping on skis. One Sunday in May there had been mondo families on skis and snowboards, downhill racers practising on a closed Blue Diamond hill, telemark skiers on North Divide and Ecstasy, nobly genuflecting with each turn. There were trick skis and skis not much longer than your shoe, even people perched comically on yellow bikes set atop short skis.

But Monday was different. Monday was gangs of snowboarders. Monday was acne and attitude and dreads and MC Hammer pants rippling in the breeze.

Many boarders seemed oblivious to others on the hill, cutting off my son, who was just learning to ski, jumping over my head on the Bunkers and blocking everyone’s way by lying sprawled across an entire slope as if inhabiting a frat living room.

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