FasterSkier: The Legends We Are Living Out

In a history of American skiing centered around the Upper Midwest, author Ryan Rodgers weaves together the stories of individuals who have found joy, love, and purpose in skiing with their heel detached, inspiring his readers to do so, too.

The story of Nordic skiing in the Midwest—its origins and history, its star athletes and races, and its place in the region’s social fabric and the nation’s winter recreationThe individualistic and energy intensive mode of moving through winter’s harsh environment on skis requires a medium suggestive of walking its lonesome valley, and the ancient timelessness of doing so. It’s perhaps less glamorous than climbing nearly 3000 vertical feet up a cliff face with no rope, but also easier to connect with; less documentary, and more rhapsody. 

With Winter’s Children: A Celebration of Nordic SkiingRyan Rodgers has accomplished just that. His work is a well-researched, extensively reported history that gets at the Norwegian ideal, sought throughout, of idraet – ski-sport, the mixing of ancient technique with spiritual renewal. Rodgers takes the epic tales of American skiing, and allows its practitioners to work together with his prose to form a journey with all the ebbs, flows, wanderings and epiphanies of a long ski in the woods. In doing so, he lifts the stories of this sport, done at the edges of frozen existence, out of the ether and into something material.

Full review at FasterSkier