SKI BOUND BRIAN WANGSGARD in appeal to the critical eyes of fellow skiers. Stretch pants and gloves must match in color, and the parka and cap must coordinate with them. One doesn’t purchase skis unless their color pleasingly associates with the skier’s clothing. After seeing the fervor with which the skiers observe rules of style and | find myself within a growing minority of teen-aged persons who do not ski. While many friends travel to the snowy mountains with their hickory sticks, | remain at home, content with my role as a non-skier. Superficially, | attribute the fact that I do not ski to cowardice; however, cow- ardice alone does not keep me from the slopes. The psychological attitude which the sport connotates retards my enthusiasm to associate with it. Many young people feel that skiing makes them superior, “top-drawer.” They pursue skiing not as a sport for exercise, pleasure, and relaxation but as a symbol of social and financial success. They regard other skiers as the elite and non-skiers as peasants. Although a peasant, | do not want to degrade skiing, only the elite skier; for he incorrectly assumes that a skirack on his automobile sets him apart from the world as an individual who presumably can slide down a hill on seventy-five-dollar barrel staves with excellence. To insure his image to the public, the skier makes certain that the rack stays on his car from November until March for everyone to see. the fashion, ene might suppose they expect to meet Dior on the slopes. Taken from the clothing, the ski parka has become a status symbol. The greatest social successes wear parkas, whether or not they ski. A parka alludes that the wearer may or may not ski, but the first impression presents him as a young Stein Erickson. When a friend of mine recently sported a new parka, | asked him why he had bought it. Typical of too many persons today, he replied, “I’m going to take up skiing, but | just have this parka now. I'll get the skis later.” | have seen many young boys (and girls), formerly pleasant individuals, transformed into fakes, pompous, presumtuous, and assuming. Wearing a status-marking ski parka affected them with vehemence similar to canned spinach enacting muscles of the famed sailor, Popeye. A veil of pretension quickly darkened their personable radiations, and brought forth attitudes of superiority, smartness, and arrogance. Now only one term Of course, the more expensive ski-rack, the better the owner skis. The contemporary young skier concerns himself less with his choice of skis than with other items of equipment, for to ski successfully he must wear proper clothing, not necessarily proper in functionalism, but proper (14) describes them; obnoxious teen- agers. They speak with disgusting phrases; they reply with smart remarks; and they act like tin gods. These changes occur because nonskiers and skiers wear their parkas off the slopes to impress the layman. They do not impress me. Skiing and its areas of association make a sanctuary in which mental pygmies can flower into social giants scent. All of this type of skiers turn to skiing as a refuge in much the same way an infant turns to thumbsucking as a comfort. When participation in a sport becomes a symbol of rank in society and serves as a recluse for insecure minds, the sport suffers. If skiing should survive as recreation and sport, those people who ski merely for social recognition must seriously adjust their thinking, and those who use it to inflate their egos must also change their ideas. True ski-enthusiasts should work to by simply talking louder and faster than the next skier or pseudo-skier. The clique shelters them like a haven for lost souls. By discussing new skis, last or lost weekends at ski resorts, and supposedly proposed trips to European ski lodges, the unskilled skier escapes to a fantasy world which builds up his ego. He escapes to this false world because he must leave, if only momentarily, the life of a soul without character and a body without visible virtues. Because he can make nothing of himself in competition with honest people, the “drug-store’’ skier bathes himself in ski language and overwhelms his fellows with the re-institute skiing in America SONNET JUDY RUTHSTROM |n summer, On green b cherry forget b| blossoms > tall fal lawn for sound of crickets mating call. Then wait for wind on diviee grass, tangled Laine, Soft lips, awakened nh autumn, Loop frost Then against wait Orange for tongues, a walt bop rising ZA, caress like breezes ln spring, forget Lop a window awe ee flutter snow and and in aolden icicles frozen metamorphosed dream (15) pane. forgotten denying nae dust pear. / summer s lane together, the black-specked Then broken piled forget ripened red-soiled laughter leaves ln winter, op forget as sport, rather than a status symbol. fall rots a of the in a braath, death. leaves paper baseball eaves. glove, dry Fields and love. tight in an orange kite. a