Skiing, on its best days, doesn't feel like sport. It feels like drawing. You're carving a line nobody else will ever ski exactly the same way — through powder that fell last night, over wind-scoured crust, down a face the sun has been working on all morning. The mountain hands you a fresh canvas every run, and your job is to read it.

There's a moment at the top of a turn when you're weightless — between edges, between intentions — where everything goes quiet. That suspended half-second is what brings me back. It's the closest thing I know to flying, and the closest thing I know to surrender.

The conditions never repeat. Bluebird groomers, heavy spring slush, January smoke, surprise ice under fresh snow — each one asks something different of you. You stop fighting it and start composing with it. That's the art: not controlling the mountain, but answering it.