I'm not a skier, but I play one on TV

North Dakota has officially broken a standing record for most snowfall in one month. We're currently working to tame roughly 30 inches of snow on roads and in yards, and that kind of accumulation means one thing: powder day on the prairie. It doesn't happen often (I haven't skied powder in North Dakota since middle school), but here it is.

For anyone not subjected in person to my endless childhood ski stories, Huff Hills Ski Resort is a modest mom-and-pop joint nestled in the Missouri River bluffs south of Bismarck/Mandan. The Beck family opened Huff 15 years ago this year, an anniversary they'll celebrate with a torchlight ceremony this Wednesday night. The resort, consisting of two double chairlifts and a three-story chalet, was built on the site of the former Twilight Hills. Several decades before, a group of doctors and other well-to-do folk in Bismarck opened Twilight Hills to feed their need for skiing. Unfortunately, their concept of mountain management was to ski often and work seldom. The place folded as the ski boom of the '60s subsided.

Conditions have varied drastically over the years. Jim, the grizzled Beck paterfamilias, has perfected the art of snowmaking out of desperation, using an armada of second-hand snow guns and groomers from Red Lodge, Montana. The teen snowboarding craze that swept the rural west in the late '90s kept Huff from going under, though a fair few skiers of talent have crept out of the rafters lately. Die-hards like Dad, my sister Em and me established a friendly repoire with the mountain management, eventually joining the National Ski Patrol to volunteer our services a few days a season. Giving lessons, putting up tower pads, patching up the occasional tweaked wrist or broken collarbone. Another of Dad's former students, my friend David, fell short of joining the NSP but has followed the skiing bug to Colorado College. I won't rail on him too hard here for dipping his toe in the telemark pool.

With low annual snowfall the past seven years or so, business at Huff has been in decline. But this season has breathed new life into the place. I trucked out to patrol a third day today before heading back to Missoula, and the place was packed. Over 500 day-pass holders alone, not to mention the scores of high school snowboarders with season passes. Surprisingly, there wasn't a single injury on the hill. Just kids, parents and grandparents out for a good time in the snow. Temps stayed around 30, with sunshine and low winds. For the first time since I was 13, I stood in a North Dakota lift line for more than five minutes. Jim summed up his opinion of the day by smiling past his tobacco pipe and telling me, "I'm tired."

In the words of Bing Crosby...

As we all know, winter storms over the past two weeks have draped large swaths of North America in a nice white Christmas blanket. High winds, subzero temps, relentless snowfall. It's been a long time coming. Only a month ago I was complaining over pints of Cold Smoke that Snowbird and Alta were receiving unfair powder conditions while Whitefish, Lost Trail and any other ski resort in my backyard couldn't even turn on snow guns. Even a week ago, the coverage at Montana Snowbowl proved pathetic, reminiscent of my first season skiing there in 04/05 (northwestern Montana received roughly 50 percent of average snowfall that season, according to the National Climate Data Center). The inch-long coreshot on the base of my left Rossignol Bandit is testament to the fact.

No more. The latest cadre of severe weather systems are hellbent on making up for the late start to winter. North Dakota has seen higher snow accumulation this December than all of last year. Friends flying through MSP International Airport, O'Hare and Denver walked into bars over the holiday with stories of delays, re-routings or full-on cancellations. Ian described watching airport personnel dole out billet pads to stranded passengers when nearby hotels reached capacity. Four days ago the National Weather Service said Bismarck was on its way to breaking a 1916 snowfall record of 21.7 inches for December. At that time, accumulation in town had hit 19 inches. We've received at least six inches since. Daytime temps have remained in the single digits, with occasional windchills around -10 to -15.

So, the personal impact: I spent Wednesday and Friday this week on National Ski Patrol duty at Huff Hills Ski Resort, south of Bismarck/Mandan. Dug out equipment, ran tobaggans, etc. I shoveled the driveway and sidewalks twice, with a reprieve this morning when my elementary school P.E. teacher Kurt came by with his snowblower. I rediscovered the dangers of digging out window wells while helping Dad roof-rake the house (always make sure you announce your presence in a window well unless you want to suffocate in a prairie avalanche). I cleared paths to the woodpile, to the driver's side door of my car, and in the backyard. The latter proved necessary for our aged border collie, Freckles, to make it to the bathroom. And I high-centered my Subaru Sport on a berm outside the coffee shop, resulting in more digging and the drafting of three hefty passersby to push. Not since 1996, when I crafted a series of tunnels through the drifts in my front yard, have we had anywhere near this much snow. More to follow, but for now some pictures.

Whole lot of nothing

Completed yet another 800-mile cross-country trek yesterday. The Deer Lodge Valley offered up a nice ground blizzard to keep me awake, and shooting stars intermittently kept me entertained between Glendive and Bismarck. But 12 hours is 12 hours. I'll do a little jig the day someone invents a car that drives itself.

Keeping ye olde blog updated has been a challenge. Not a whole lot to write about. The freelance assignments continue to trickle in. The needle on my savings account gauge gets a little closer to empty with every rent check and trip to Kettlehouse. Beyond that, life is an endless series of writing clips and applications. Feels a bit like fishing the Teton River. Whole lot of nothing.

In broader news, the Minneapolis Fed released its economic forecast for '09 a few days ago. Every state in the ninth district save North Dakota shook the magic 8 ball for community economies and got a resounding "outlook is bleak" (Three cheers for NoDakers and their tireless optimism). Employment to drop, manufacturing to decrease, ag outlook mixed. Income levels might go up a bit, but not enough to cover rising costs of living. Damn inflation. Some might see the downsizing or closing of some independent businesses in Missoula as indicators of a failing economy (Shakespeare and Co. closing its sattelite non-fiction storefront, World Games and Stoverud's closing), but it seems a bit early yet to make that call.

One bit of cynical humor to come out of all this economic turmoil: the founding of a new journalistic organization in New York. ASSME (American Society of Shit-canned Media Elite) held a big holiday to-do last week, and I hope the organization's membership swells nationally. Laughing in the face of mounting unemployment. Other stories on the layoffs make it sound like the media is going the way of the dinosaur and the dicso-themed roller rink without resisting or acknowledging it. And this depressive outlook has spread. I received and completed a survey for the University of Georgia today on my experiences in the field of journalism since graduating with my BA. Loaded with questions like "will broadcast radio be around in 20 years?" and "will newspapers be around in 20 years?" (Being from NoDak, I answered yes to all). I'm hoping its just widespread seasonal depression.

The Cutting Room Floor #1

One of the most interesting aspects of journalism is also the least talked about: the cutting room floor. I can't count the number of pages of chicken-scratch that have gone unused in stories over the years. Not just partial quotes, erroneous facts and source details with no bearing on the story, but really good stuff that simply got the axe due to word count limitations. These never see life beyond the facing page in a reporter's notebook.

I've been haunted by a moment trimmed from a recent piece. Three weekends back, I covered the Proposition 8 protest in Missoula as part of my ongoing freelance stint with the local alt-weekly. My focus quickly became paternal support for a gay son, but that wasn't the only story I documented that morning.

The crowd marched in a lane-wide column from the Xs at the end of Higgins Street to the court house lawn under the guidance of a local gay rights activist, Jamee G. Along the way I spoke with several individuals about their involvement in the movement. One in particular, Deborah G., informed me she'd been active in rallies in a number of states in the past. For some, Prop 8 was a major setback banning gay marriage in the movement's bastion state of California, a huge blow that took the wind out of the post Obama-win sails. But as everyone pointed out to me that morning, Montana is in dire straights. A person can still lose his or her job based on sexual orientation here.

So what was your initial reaction to the passing of Prop 8 on Nov. 4? I asked Deborah.

She fought to choke back tears, but it all came out. Sobs. Broken sentence fragments. I felt a bit awkward, distanced from her emotional response by the pen and notebook. "It was really sad and it also upset me to see that I don't have the same rights as other people in this country," she managed to say.

I nodded, unsure what to say. She explained how difficult life was, feeling like a "second class citizen." We parted ways when we reached the court house, and I conducted about five more interviews before calling it a day. Though I found a compelling story, the one I submitted to the editor, I didn't find a story with as much raw emotion as Deborah's. Her's was simply too brief, too disjointed from the rest of what I witnessed at the rally.

Amazing what you find on the cutting room floor.

Teleportation

A thought occurred to me last night, somewhere between Deer Lodge and Drummond as the umpteenth pair of LED-blue headlights washed out the stretch of I-90 in front of me: the future inventor of teleportation will unquestionably be from the Midwest. The invention itself will be born out of a moment of frustration with the inadequecies of Amtrak, Greyhound, Rimrock Trailways and the DOT of the great state of Blank.

On a semi-related note, I've decided a tram system from Sula to Missoula would reduce or completely nullify the necessity for a Western Bypass. If Bitterroot Valley commuters could simply take a train in to the city to work, traffic on Highway 12 and Reserve would calm considerably. Tourists would go nuts for it in the spring, summer and fall, enviro-geeks could stop complaining about levels of carbon emissions during peak traffic hours, and the Mountain Line would be forced to seriously reexamine its efficiency. There is no doubt a considerable list of challenges and drawbacks to the idea, but it's been nagging at me all the same.

Finally, I've been reading an absolutely fascinating book the past week. "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Iraq," by Dahr Jamail. With a limited background in journalism, Jamail quit a job at Denali National Park in AK and paid his own way in to Baghdad. He had limited contacts, but documents everything. I'd always known wire stories and major news outlets were laced with Washington spin, I just never knew how "off" that spin was. Jamail documents not only the process by which he reported for alternative news outlets online and the interaction he had with fellow journalists, but creates a horrifying backdrop for the war and peppers it with the most realistic and earth-bound characters.

"I saw a small boy holding a huge stone, standing at the edge of the street. He glared at the Humvees and Bradleys as their treads rattled loudly across the pavement. A soldier riding atop another passing Bradley pulled out his pistol and aimed it at the boy's head, keeping him in his sights until his vehicle rolled away toward the bright sun. As we regrouped, one student asked us, "Who are the terrorists here now?"

Read it. Or don't.