If I have a favourite thing about getting older it might be this: routines. Not only getting into them (which, I imagine, explains the label), but realizing how much I enjoy and anticipate them.
Like a second childhood. For someone who spent most of his adult life kicking around the world chasing stories and making a living from personal impermanence and instability (to the extent that friends in this town were so used to my comings and goings that they didn’t know for years I actually lived here) it’s a bit of a soft landing. But there it is.
Willing to embrace my Creature-of-Habitdom as a somewhat wizened elder, I’ve now noticed something else: of all seasonal routines, those of spring comprise my favourite crucible. And each is particularly tied to being in Whistler. In fact, before I lived here I’m not sure I had any spring rituals at all. But I do now, and I can enjoy all of them on the same day.
First up is spring skiing. I’ve always enjoyed this little slice of the greater sliding gestalt, but it was hard to satisfy with any consistency when I lived in Southern Ontario, where spring skiing, were there any, could happen anytime from January to March. Although I made a few classic spring ski sojourns from Toronto to the Laurentian resort of Gray Rocks to ski bumps, to Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula for backcountry touring, and to New Hampshire’s Tuckerman Ravine to test myself against its 50-degree headwall, these were more novelty than routine.
Since moving to Whistler, however, the long days, sloppy snow and WSSF shenanigans have cultivated a much-anticipated spring skiing vibe. So much so that I feel visceral disappointment when things don’t pan out to allow locals to make the best of it—like climate shifts that now see winter turn directly to summer, or early mountain closures (thanks pandemic!), or construction interruptions or, ahem, operational incompetence.
In years where things have disappointed locally, I’ve have the good fortune to follow work assignments to northern Scandinavia where it’s neither quite spring nor winter, but a season called vårvinter that well aligns with Whistler’s vertical cline—powder up top, messy down below. This spring has been pretty damn good in Whistler with WB keeping the runs in great shape, so no complaints. It’s fun up there!
Another spring routine is watching hockey. Lots and lots of hockey. Like two games a night for weeks. Sure, I’ve always been a hockey fan, but I never got into monitoring all the teams as they sifted through the playoff gauntlet until they’d been winnowed down to a final two and you sit down to watch the final series knowing the intricacies of how each and every player ended up there. This is especially crucial when there are no teams you would otherwise care about seeing do battle.
I’m also a born-and-bred Leafs fan who, over the past 19 years has had many years of flat-out nothing, and when there was a series to cheer about, suffering the gut-punch of an early exit or Game 7 loss. Cheering for Toronto is more fun to do from afar, it seems, as there’s a little community of Leaf fans (you’ve seen the hats and sweaters every spring) to nod at as you pass each other or gather at Roland’s or Tapley’s for a game. It’s also an affirmation of roots to cheer for a hometown team in an unrelated community. And this year things are looking up! (Note: Stanley Cup delusions are also a rite of spring.)
Third on my list is an annual spring check-in on reptiles emerging from their dens. This is a local bonus I never saw coming when I first moved here. Even during a distant past life as a research biologist this wasn’t something I engaged in (though I’ll plead guilty to years spent invading nighttime ponds to watch amphibians have sex in the beam of my headlamp). But having worked on inventorying hibernacula and critical habitat for species-at-risk like rubber boas and sharp-tail snakes in Pemberton, I now look forward to seeing how they’re doing every year—particularly given how that habitat is being gobbled up by housing developments that have swollen the human population and created insane recreational pressure.
It’s also a self-satisfying treasure hunt where you have to know where to go, when, and how to look to have any success at all. Using hard-honed skills to find discreet places where the little guys are still hanging in there always makes my spring a little brighter.
Finally, vegetable gardening. I have my plant-pandering partner and AWARE’s awesome GROW program to thank for that. I grew a garden once in university. Dug a square of land out of the lawn of a communal home I lived in, threw a bunch of seeds (including cannabis) into the dirt and didn’t touch it until September. I produced 70 zucchinis and a bag of weed. That was fun, but dumb luck.
Gardening in Whistler and learning through trial-and-error what will and won’t grow here—and how that has changed radically due to climate change in only the 20 years I’ve been here—is always inspiring and comes with the added bonus of filling your freezer with food; even now, after eating through them all winter, I still have bags of frozen tomatoes and greens. And the living room is littered with seed starts and little green things nurtured through the first phases of their lives. They’re just getting their grooves—ready to shift into routines of their own.
Leslie Anthony is a biologist, writer and author of several popular books on environmental science.
