Above: The Jenkinson kids, circa 1991.
A piece originally published in the 2011/2012 edition of the SBC Ski and Snowboard Resort Guide.
As a child, the far reaches of your world were tangible. A plot of lush grass with clearly defined boundaries, the rises and depths of your sandbox were an entire continent, the frenzy of an anthill an empire. The closer you looked the more there was to see, and each season provided a splendour of new experience. To gaze up at the crisp colours of fall was the preview to beloved winters, when mounds of white clay lie waiting to be shaped into kingdom or battlefield.
As you grew older, your world expanded to your neighbourhood, your city and beyond. Initially satisfied by the riverbanks and mountain ranges of your greater backyard, you outgrew these too, in time. You became enthralled with the idea of international offerings, of layer upon layer of culture and scenery. Your youthful ego traveled the world with a checklist of places seen and unseen, an immature imperialist conquering the world with foreign beers on a budget. Travelling ceased to feel like sacrifice as it became increasingly easy to stay in touch with friends and family far away. Time passed with the grain and you managed to find routine within the ever changing.
Yet as you grew older and your checklist grew longer, as you video conferenced loved ones and perused instant messages, the map that once spread out before you began to fold in from the edges. Like a child pulling up and over the fence, your ideology of motion could no longer be sustained. It became clear that the world is not infinite, and what’s more, every place you could go was not necessarily a place that you wanted to be.
You began to recognize the subtle ache once the haze of excitement had settled. The joy derived from anticipation, of holding in your mind every possible landscape, event, personality and interaction, every joyful celebration or testing complication, was gone. You learned that experience is only infinite before hand, when all that could be hasn’t yet been revealed.
You haven’t ceased to explore, but you are altered. You’ve taught yourself not to qualify adventure, believing days of exploration in the Whistler backcountry to be as valuable as sharing a knowing smile with a fellow traveller on the Rome Metro. Every tiny detail polishes you now, like a wet mitten over the face of snowball. This realization sets the surface of your skin on fire as it means that everything you do, everything you see and you feel, has its own inherent value. The steeps of Switzerland or the ski hills of your origin. New York nightlife or a dinner in your backyard with old friends. Comfort or complication. Celebration or solace.
And so you explore and re-explore with an eye for the small and an ear for the quiet. You are intimate enough to see similarities in the places you visit instead of differences. When you look up at the bows of snow weighted tree tops or down from chairlifts to inspect and appreciate the lines of fellow conquerors, when you take the time to speak casually with strangers without stunting your laughter or filling the silences. When you notice something for the first time in a place you think you know by heart, your perception of the world expands once again, and your heart expands along with it. You learn that only through attention to the smallest fractions of the whole can you hold most of the world in your hands. And only then can you accept, and even appreciate, what inevitably slips through your fingers. -Allie Jenkinson