There's an eerie calm settling over Dodge, a stillness not entirely unlike the low-pressure stillness that blankets an area like a damp cloak just before a destructive summer storm barrels through. You can hear the silence, or at least you could if they'd turn off the damn power rakes long enough to let you.
For the first time in, well, years, Whistler is not getting ready for something. We've been getting ready for the Olympics for... ever. We've been cleaning up after them since the last gobsmacked Smurf finally hung his jacket in the nostalgia closet and started pounding Prozac to hump himself over his post-partum depression. The World Ski and Snowboard Festival is over, Whistler Mountain is closed for the season, Blackcomb limps along, hoping either spring will come or these stubborn vestiges of last winter will unleash one more unholy dump of sticky powder on its alpine. And the little resort municipality that could tries to remember how things were done before it was sideswiped by the five-ring circus.
We're struggling with what Ram Dass kept trying to teach us to do: be here now! Living in the moment is hard. If you don't think so and if you want to wallow a bit more in Olympic memories - it's okay, you'll get over it eventually - think back to the start gate of any of the men's alpine events.
Athletes work diligently to control their emotions, clear their minds and, particularly in the start gate, live entirely in the moment. In other words, be here now. Watching the Canadian men in the start gate was a bit like watching Mexican jumping beans on a hot sidewalk. For the most part - and this is in no way an indictment; hell, they're only human and young humans to boot - they looked like they were about to jump out of their speedsuits, they were so wound up. Manny, who usually looks so cool in the start gate you almost wonder if he's still awake, looked like he was about to turn himself inside out.
Being here, now, ain't easy. If you think it is, and you haven't had the chance to stand at the top of an Olympic course during the Olympics, maybe you can remember where your head was at - assuming it was still attached to your neck - the first time you were about to have sex. QED.
But the here and now is what we have, at least for the time being. Oh sure, we're "getting ready" for summer season, we're totting up the costs - at least the ones we'll admit to - of the Olympics, and those of us who have been hanging on until after the Games to launch our escape plan are wondering whether now's the time to pull the pin or whether we should hang on a little longer, opting for the devil we know rather than that stranger with a pitchfork.
With any luck, the people we elected to run this place - as opposed to the people who may really be running this place - are living in the now. The future has finally snuck up on us. That would be the future where we have to figure out how to "sustain" this physical nut we've created without crippling, annual tax increases. That would be the future where we've reached buildout and have to figure out ways to keep our happy mountain home affordable. The future where we don't need the same size government to maintain us that we needed to build ourselves. The future where we rely less and less on works and services charges. The future where we do the impossible: more with less.
We're firing up the Official Community Plan process that got sidetracked by our infatuation with, and occasional blind adherence to, Whistler 2020. We might begin to tackle some of those thorny be here now questions. Or we may just be spun into irrelevance by those who have deafly ignored our input into the budgeting process the last few times we've been asked for it. We'll see.
Despite all this planning we win awards doing, we seem to stumble from crisis to crisis. Victoria changes the tax rules for condos. Crisis. A court rules we didn't pay enough for expropriated land two decades ago. Crisis. An asphalt plant that shouldn't be where it is needs to move. Crisis. Hotel tax isn't panning out the way we planned. Crisis.
If good government's gonna happen, it's gonna happen here or nowhere. Oh God, what a depressing thought.
So, on to more pressing questions. Like, answering the annual query: what kind of season was it? In a word, unique. It was a season like no other and hopefully, like no other ever to come. It was a year that started with a bang, top to bottom skiing almost from opening day, rock skis optional. Anyone with enough free time got their season in before the nonsense started.
It was a season when the mountains seemed severely diminished by the loss of Creekside. True, 90 per cent of WB's terrain was open. Equally true, a person is 90 per cent whole even with both feet amputated. Getting' around's still a bitch though. It was a season when, if you skied during February, you could have been forgiven for wondering whether you'd crossed a "closed" rope, there were so few people on the mountains some days.
And it was a season with a kickass spring... as long as you're not looking for a lot of heat.
But I'm not going to grade the Olympic season. I'm giving it an incomplete and making it repeat next year, sans Olympics. There's just no way to mark a season like this one.
Special Callout : Indulge me but I've got to thank some people. If you missed this year's Chairlift Revue, you missed some good entertainment. If a true, local theatre culture is ever going to take root in Whistler it's going to grow off the efforts on display last Sunday evening. Local actors, local writers, local producers and directors put on a helluva show. It may not have been "professional," lord knows we didn't have a single Vancouverite parachuted in to help us, and it may have been rough in a few points but all I heard was a lot of laughter and a lot of applause.
So thanks to the actors: Angie Nolan, Michele Bush, Chris Quinlan, Leslie Anthony, Karen Playfair, Magdalena Regdos, Kevin Mikkelsen, Don Stevenson, Myrna Iaconetti-Bush, Grant Stoddard, William Roberts, Greg Eymundson, Stephanie Reesor, Emily Wood, Raine Playfair, Ace McKay-Smith and Fraser McGaw. Thanks to the writers: Katherine Fawcett, Jules Older, Leslie Anthony, Suzanne Malone, Karen McLeod and Normand Harvey.
And thanks to all you who came out and supported the effort. Your laughter and applause was the payoff.
