I still remember the first day I stepped into a pair of skis. As a nervous and self-conscious ten year old, I was left slopeside by my friend’s mom to wait for the 11 other kids that would be in our program for the weekend—a program designed for kids who had never skied before.
My friend was nowhere to be seen: He was off in the fresh new snow up the mountain, far more excited about that than the nerves of his paranoid friend. What I didn’t know as I stood there, nervous, in the cold, was that I was about to start a love affair that would last a lifetime.

I fell in love with skiing 32 years ago. For me, there’s nothing more magical than the flow of making successive turns, down a steep slope, in fresh snow and gleaming sunshine. I tried for a long time to put words to it, but words like ‘floating,’ or ‘flying’ just don’t do justice to the soaring spirit I feel when I breathe in the fresh, cold mountain air, and pole forward at the top of a beckoning slope.

Years ago, the best word description I’ve found was written in the pages of Powder Magazine. I’ve long since lost the hard copy I had, but I remember it talking about the joy of gliding, the combination of strain and release from initiating and then launching into a turn, and the easy flow of letting the skis point downhill and just go…. The Spirit of Glissé, they called it. Glissé just sounds like skiing! But then again, I wonder if I can ever put my love for skiing into words.

Skiing has been my exercise, my escape, and my exploration of the limits of my courage. It’s been countless days with great friends—mountaintop, mountainside and après ski. And it remains the greatest sport I’ve ever tried.

Have you felt the Spirit of Glissé?

Is this the year for your kids to fall in love with skiing? Linking turns on the open slopes of June Mountain, will they too find the ‘Spirit of Glissé?’ Kids under 12 ski free at June Mountain.