Transcendentalist Essay (Rough Draft)

Transcendentalist Essay

Mikaela Balkind

9/30/13

Here I sit in front of a luminescent computer screen, clicking boundlessly through pages of the Volkl race ski designs. The appeal to buying the newest GS Racetiger with sidewall construction and streamlined shape is unwavering. It is impossible to deny the urges that lie within every skier, that constantly defy our other beliefs and force one to the edge of extreme consumerism.

New skis are not a cheap product, the resources are layered like a fancy cake, each material sliced and molded to each other with exact precision. Unfortunately, since the appeal to speed and the meticulous design of the perfect ski grabs so many of us in a strong staunch hold, buying the best ski is the only option. Each season as new designs are released and the technology of the ski modernizes, skiers are promised that their ski will improve their experience and form. In a sport that is based off of adrenaline and the will to be completely fearless, the urge to have the technology to push you farther is compelling.

But what is it that sculpts this experience? Looking back at the basics, the sport was crafted from nature. It developed from a means of transportation to a competitive sport. People gradually realized the appeal of the sport and the unique feeling. Skiing has allowed the modern world an escape. Similar to other outdoor sports, when skiing, humans can connect with their surroundings or “spend one day as deliberately as nature” as Thoreau would of put it.

Confronting nature in the sublime beauty of the untrimmed landscape, people are able to dissolve into nothing but a thought bubble. They claim that in nature, they are able to discover truths and feelings. It is their one place of solitude where “technology” can’t distract them. Phones, emails, television, there is no place for them out in the wilderness and when one is skiing, whether it be the cold air or the actual appeal to be in the moment, this technology is rarely found. But technology doesn’t just apply to electronic devices. Equipment can be classified as technology as well, just in a different form. Is it really that different to separate yourself from your phone for a couple of hours when you are literally bound and strapped to the newest technology of ski equipment? There is a truth that due to its inability to beep and upload, ski equipment is less distracting, but in the overall picture is it standing between humans and the process of liberation through nature?

Skiing has allowed many people the opportunity to connect and find peace. Skiing goes hand in hand with nature and the untouched substance of snow. But on the other hand, technology yanks on skiing, demanding its attention and deriving it from nature. In order to progress in the sport, we need to progress through nature. Every progression opens a new door, but also closes another one behind it. The expansion of a ski mountain into new territories of freshly discovered backcountry requires vast amounts of equipment and natural resources. Every new pair of skis eliminates a tree. How do skiers stand inbetween progression and natural experience when the sport requires both?

If Thoreau were around to answer this question he would immediately refer back to his text and explain that simplicity and “to front only the essential facts of life” is how we must evolve to living. What does that mean for the sport though? It would stand stagnant in an ever progression world. If technology were to remain as what it is today, that would allow people to be active in the sport but not challenged. The expansion and the lust for new equipment and larger ski areas is depleting the natural experience of the sport yet we require it to feed our modern intuition. 

So here I sit staring at my computer screen utterly perplexed by the contradicting issue within this lifestyle. How can I keep up with the FIS regulations for new equipment without sacrificing the platform for which I feel in love with the sport in the first place. I don’t think you can. You can try to follow one extreme, but at some point your experience will be diluted and reach and abrupt wall. During the Transcendentalist period, Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman all expressed their devotion to solitude in nature. These theorologist, delved into a thought process that contradicted the modern expansion around them. I believe due to the impact of the industrial revolution, these men realized that there was to much progress in the world and it was distracting people from experience nature firsthand. So if we brought any one of these provocative writers into our modern world, they would surely doubt our modernization, but how does a population that has grown up in a technological world pause its growth.