The topic suggestion for this week was "shredding pow," so I tried to take an interesting approach towards a sport I've grown to love. A sport with some incredible sights and often overlooked sounds. This essay is about a few of those sounds, and how they end up falling into my daily life like so many proverbial drifts of snow. I give you...

White Noise

Once you hear it, it never stops. You hear it on the radio, in traffic, even in the rise and fall of voices at a party, and the longer you go without hearing the real thing, the louder it gets. Sometimes, it’s all you can make out.

The soft hiss of powder snow parting on the base of a snowboard or ski will enchant you if you let it. It sticks with you and calls you back to the winter woods.

That’s where the magic happens, where the symphony is unleashed. It starts with the breath; a soft huff of air that grows evermore apparent with each step. Then the crunch of snow beneath the snowshoes. It creaks and crunches as it compresses, creating a steady rhythm for the ascent. The thump and rush of blood to the head builds in tempo, reaching a rapid and deafening crescendo before winding down for a dramatic suspension.

The drum roll of bindings being tightened hints at a new beginning. The rhythmic pulse of breath slows and nearly silences. Replacing it is the rush of air through your ears; a rush bringing new meaning to wood-winds, rising and falling in a lilting melody that coincides with your speed. The staccato snap of tree branches under heavy loads of snow provides a drumbeat of percussion.

Some people never experience it, and experience is more apt a term than hear, for backcountry shredding is something to be felt, seen, smelled, and tasted. It establishes perspective, so that the finer melodies of day to day life are appreciated in new ways. The blustery walk to work feels warmer after dawn patrol on the wind-blasted peaks. The sandwich at lunch a little richer after the granola bar on the trail.

It’s easy to tell who hears the music; they seem adrift in its tonal shifts. In the hush that follows a heavy snowfall, you can sometimes catch them humming along. The white noise grows inside of them, shaping their facades: a slight tan starting just below the cheekbones and ending at the neck, a slight smile as forecasters call for feet of snow, perhaps a scruffy beard colonizing a usually clean shaven face. But the innocent tune whispering in the back of their mind shapes much more than their physical appearance.

The true maestros and aficionados start behaving differently the second the leaves begin to fall. They lose focus, drifting into endless gazes towards barely visible peaks. A sudden interest in exercise or willingness to walk the dog follows. People who couldn’t tell you when the last time it rained if their life depended on it begin reading technical weather reports, spouting off barometric pressure readings and following NOAA on Twitter.

No matter who you are, though, there’s an inaudible music to snow gently falling in the night. Those of us who ski and snowboard yearn to magnify and lengthen our exposure to that music.

To us, there’s nothing more beautiful than the sound of White Noise.