The Future Is Looking Up

I survey the small hills that dominate the terrain below my skis, rolling like giant pillows of snow toward the horizon, and wonder if this is what skiing on the moon would be like. All this white, cold, lonely potential coming at me in short climbs and descents. I drop over the lip of a windblown cornice and carve wide, playful arcs, my fat Icelantic skis defying gravity and letting me float in and out of the knee-deep powder, just like an astronaut bounding on the moon. I could get lost in this weightlessness forever, really I could, but the smell of bacon brings me back to earth.

There are maybe a dozen people lounging in the snow at the bottom of the hill, stripped to their base layers and everyone in sunglasses. There’s a guy in a Hawaiian shirt. A few people wearing leis. It’s an impromptu beach party—but at eight thousand feet in the Colorado Rockies. As I ski into the gathering and