Believing long and short distance forecasts
I’m a bit late reading Bill McKibben’s thin volume Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Stenuously about the environmental writer’s serious training as a cross-country skier in 1997 (the book came out in 2000). But with temps in the 40s and incessant rain over the last couple days robbing me of skiing opportunities, I’m back to running (puddle hopping, is more like it), spending more time on the basement NordicTrack, and reading.
The current meltdown brings to the fore every cross-country skiers’ lament and particular sensitivity: Winters aren’t what they used to be.
“Winter, and especially the recent lack of it, makes Nordic skiing a tenuous enterprise,” McKibben writes in Long Distance. “I’ve obsessed about global warming for more than a decade; my books on the topic have been translated into 18 languages; I’ve written hundreds of articles, given hundreds of speeches. But I’ve never found an audience as receptive as the ski salesman.”
McKibben and skier/Silent Sports columnist Mark Parman exchange grievances over global warming in the current issue of the magazone. You can read the article here.
On the ground here in central Wisconsin, Iola Winter Sports Club ski trail groomer Phil Johnsrud told me yesterday he was remaining optimistic the base would hold in spite of the rain. But he’s hearing plenty of worried grumblings from skiers.
“I’ve seen this happen too many times,” Johsrud said of promising early ski seasons done in by a warm spell. “If we just get a couple inches of snow, I think we’ll be OK.”
If not over the long term, as McKibben warns, we can still hope to be skiing again in the short term.
– Joel Patenaude