Instant Karma: The Heart and Soul of a Ski Bum
Wayne Sheldrake
ISBN 0-9796255-0-5
$17.95

Distributors: Books West; Small Press DistributionWith a foreword by Steven Kotler, author of West of Jesus

Reviews: Laurence Washington reviews IK in the Rocky Mountain News, 11/30/2007

Book Description: With the beauty and precision of a poet, Wayne Sheldrake examines his place in the close community of ski bums, people who give up “normality” to live on their own terms. Sheldrake’s is a life of recklessness and restlessness, dedicated to adventure, courage, and the pure joy of second and third chances. He maps the hidden trails of virgin snow and conjures the rush of hucking off cornices and skiing blind in sudden snowstorms with exacting detail, all the while finding his way to understanding and accepting the powerful bonds of romance, friendship, and learning to let go. In Sheldrake’s universe, “instant karma” is what happens when we believe our grandest passion can’t be separated from the everyday, and then live in accordance with that faith.

About the author: Wayne Sheldrake has lived in Colorado for over thirty years, working as a ski instructor, teacher, ranch hand, and river guide. He received an MFA from Antioch University-Los Angeles and has written for magazines such as Writer’s Digest and America West. He lives with his wife in Southern Colorado. And he skis. You can learn more about Wayne at his website.

Blurbs “It’s obvious Wayne Sheldrake can ski. It’s also obvious he can write. He can write as good as he skis, and with much less wreckage strewn about. In fact, this memoir is as vivid and powerful as skiing down a steep mountainside on a sunny winter day full of hope and pizazz and knowledge that joy, in its purest state, is always ephemeral. But that’s what makes it so wonderful.” —John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

“Sheldrake has attracted a lot of weirdness in his pursuit of happiness. Some people are like that, magnets for oddball events. I shared a hotel room with him once in Los Angeles and the guy in the room next door fired a .45 caliber pistol out the window. We both hit the carpet and waited for security to show up. ‘Does this stuff happen to you very much?’ I asked Wayne. ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he answered. Now, with the publication of Instant Karma, I do.” —Paul Perry, author of Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson and Jesus in Egypt: Discovering the Secrets of Christ’s Childhood Years

“Wayne’s obviously a freak, right up there with…well, me.” —Greg Stump, producer & director of Blizzard of Ahhhs and License to Thrill

Introduction

A couple of seasons ago the marketing department at Squaw Valley provided me with a guide. I’d never skied with a guide before. I didn’t need a guide. I gured I’d end up with a ski instructor, get a tour of the trail map, and hear the stock stories-Olympic history, celebrity clients, new village, etc. That didn’t happen. I got Larry for a guide.

Larry skied on brown skis, plain brown skis. He liked steep runs near rocks, as steep as staircases and steeper-chutes. We skied all variety of chutes: chutes that zig-zagged between rocks, chutes that swizzled around rocks, chutes that hopscotched rocks, chutes that dived below cliffs. I nally refused above a sliver of snow narrow as dental oss that plunged into a crack no wider than a turnstile.

“No way,” I said.

“It’s been skied,” he nodded.

I knew that meant he had skied it. I asked myself, Who is this guide?

By noon my femurs were molten. They felt like they’d bend. I couldn’t keep up. Everyone seemed to know Larry. Locals were eager to hop on the quad with us. But they all went the opposite direction at the top. Nobody wanted to ski where Larry was taking me.

I kept thinking, Who is this guide?

It got more intense in the afternoon. We clambered over rocks, dirt and weeds-skis on. A patrolman hollered from a cliff above us, “Do you guys need a trail map? There’s no access down there.” Larry pointed across a face of pummeled granite and dwarf shrubs and hollered back,

“This is the access.” I grumbled as the edges of my brand new skis sparked on the stones. “You should see my bases,” he said. “I don’t have any.” (Later he showed me the yellow bottoms of his brown skis, stripped like sticks of string cheese.)

Late in the day I followed Larry down a tongue of snow into a chicane of rock walls. I ended up locked in a skidding side-slip down the second of the ve “Fingers,” a series of short shafts jammed in a monumental st of granite that punched out from the mountainside. The shaft funneled as it dropped. It shrank to a stone hall exactly 187 centimeters wide. My skis were 186s. The only way out was to leap, let the skis dive and hang on. Extreme skiers call this technique straight-lining. I’m not an extreme skier. I don’t straight-line.

As I gained velocity with rocks nearly brushing my shoulders, my thoughts screamed: Who in God’s name is this guide?

On the chair, one of Larry’s buddies congratulated him. Another said, “Yeah. Way to go in Crested Butte.” That was a hint. Finally I asked him, “What did you win?” Larry was the 2005 Masters u.s. Extreme Freeskiing Champion. The Championships were held at Crested Butte. Now, at least I knew who my guide was and why there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d keep up.

He was mid-forties, my age-still obviously a ski bum, like me. I looked around at the immensity of Squaw. I loved it-gullets and shafts, crowned ridges over deep cleaves, uted drops into gutters that poured down the abrupt walls of the Olympic Valley. Above it all, snow-lled bowls. Why hadn’t I been to this place before?

“Why wasn’t I here when I was twenty-two?” I asked Larry wistfully.

“If you had been, you’d be a whole different person now.”

I knew what he meant. It was a statement of place. He meant the mountain had shaped him-and not just as a skier. As a skier and as a person, a chunk of his being came from the shadows that fell over the banner peaks at closing time and from the jaunty morning sparkle of the opening slopes. Years of leg-wrestling soggy, muscular, Sierra snow molded him. I believed what he meant because I’d only been there a day and already I was a different skier, and a different person, forever. I felt lucky to have a guide.

When I met Larry I was working on this book, with a long way to go. He and Squaw reminded me what three decades of skiing had given me: lots of guides, and guidance. He reminded me of one of my rst ski pals, Steve Rodish. For Rodish, skiing was a dare-a big one-to be approached with deadpan composure. Mostly, it was an excuse to get off the ground into the air, longer and farther than anyone around. Speed mattered because faster was better. More speed at the edge of a snowy precipice meant ying longer and farther than anyone around. It wasn’t about getting on the snow; it was about getting off the snow.
Steve and Larry even looked similar-short, lean types with octagonal chins. Jeweled eyes scanned faces and landscapes levelly; weathered to-hell-and-back creases webbed their temples. There were other similarities. Like Rodish, Larry had a second love, surng. Steve’s was shing. Both were carpenters by trade. Neither one ate much, preferring a couple of cups of coffee in the morning. Larry met his wife skiing. Steve, too.

Larry had rules and was quick to loyalty. At one point in the afternoon, I begged him to go on without me. I couldn’t stand the idea of slowing him down. “Nope,” he said. “You can’t quit. It’s against the rules: you have to ski until four.” He led me into the lift line for one more run at 3:58. Rodish listed his rules by number: rule #1: Don’t get excited. Rule #2: Always get your paycheck. Rule #3: Try not to look like a hooked trout.
When I was a rookie ski instructor hitchhiking eighty miles one-way to get to the ski area, Steve offered me the couch in his cabin, for the rest of the winter. In return, I was required to help him nish twelve packs of Coors and listen to a tape of Jimmy Buffet ballads over and over again. (…Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late…)

They both had that knack for the low-key, understated, mighty line-uttered on a mountainside as if it were subtext meant only for you. If you had been, you’d be a whole different person by now. Once, also on the side of a mountain, on the last run of the last day of the ski season, Rodish told me, “Everybody’s going their separate ways. Some you’ll never see again. Some will die before you see them again.” He was twenty-three at the time, and the wisest person I knew. I was twenty and he knew that I was naïve enough to believe that everything goes on and on forever. I realize, looking back, that he knew he was already gone.

When Larry invited me for a beer down in the village and insisted on paying (which seemed backwards to me), I realized exactly what was going on. All those chutes-he knew the name of every one of them-they were slivers out of his life. They were what he’d found that it takes a lifetime to nd. After a climb up onto a prominent feature, he’d pointed a ski pole down a mind boggling rock crevasse and told me he’d waited seven years to do it-for exactly the right conditions and exactly the right day.

He knew the names of everyone else who had been down that chute, ever. The list was short, and it was a brotherhood. In essence, he was telling me who his guides had been, how the mountain itself had been his guide.

This was how Larry had become who he was.

At the bar he introduced me around to a few friends, including the guy who held the record for the most runs in one day on kt-22, the chair to the formidable-and revered-terrain we’d skied most of the day. The guy was a legend in Larry’s eyes. Larry’s heroes were friends like that, guys (and gals) who skied on his mountain. The mountain was their common, biggest hero of all. It made them a band. I liked that. That’s what Larry and I had in common. We both had our heroes and the biggest among them were mountains.

Two mountains and the friends who skied them have shaped me. Where I ski, in the remote ranges of the Colorado Rockies, has everything to do with what I’ve become. I met the people I love here. Some of the most important went their separate ways after a season or two. Some died before I had a chance to see them again. Those who stayed became who they are here, with me. It’s easy to say we’re just ski bums and we just ski, but it’s an authentic life. By that I mean it’s as valid when it’s hard as when it’s easy, and it’s never as easy as it looks. It’s real life.

I saw skiing give my mother relief from an agonizing divorce. I worked my way through college teaching skiing. After college, I taught skiing full-time. I met my wife skiing. Teaching skiing led me to teaching high school. When I taught high school, we skied every weekend and every holiday. I took up ski racing as an adult. My two boys grew up skiing (then, snowboarding). When I had open heart surgery at thirty-three, they watched me get back into shape so I could ski. Because of all that skiing, I didn’t go to grad school until I was in my forties. In grad school I started this book. Shortly thereafter, I got a college teaching job. I quit when the winter semester bulletin came out and I was scheduled to teach classes on Friday. My wife supported the decision. We like to ski on Fridays.

For most of my life, I resented summer. I don’t surf (sorry Larry) and I’ve never been much for shing (sorry Steve), and summer was just a grueling long-ass wait between ski seasons. But recently I gured out how to enjoy summer. I’ve taken up skiing on sand dunes. I especially like to take friends who have never done it before. They’re skeptical. I have to talk them into it.
See, it’s a lot of work climbing sand dunes with skis and boots packed on your back. Even I wonder why I’m doing it until I see someone ski on sand for the rst time. They smile. They have to. When they push the skis to turn, the sand makes a ripping sound that sounds exactly like a fart. The skis fart all the way down the dune. It’s impossible to avoid. It’s funny to watch people smile as they fart. And it’s fun to do.

Still, I’m fairly certain that none of them would have tried it if I hadn’t convinced them to come along. I understand. Like me-for the last thirty years-all they needed was a little guidance.

-Wayne Sheldrake