26.2.11

Banadad Ski Trail - 17 miles
One working boot and 3 amigos



Part of the force that sent Sam trudging across the white prairies was love of life, a gladness for health and youth that filled him as Mozart’s gayest music filled him; and part of it was his belief that the earth on which he walked had been designed by the greatest of the artists, and that if a man had the courage and fortitude not to fail it, it would not fail him. In Sam’s rough mountain-man philosophy those persons who became the wards of sadness and melancholy had never summoned for use and trial more than a part of what they had in them, and so had failed themselves and their Creator. If it was part of the inscrutable plan that he was to live through this ordeal, and again cover the bones of wife and child with mountain lilies, the strength was lying in him, waiting, and he had only to call on it – all of it – and use it, without flinching or whimpering. If he showed himself to be a worthy piece in the Great Architect’s edifice he would live; in Sam’s philosophy that’s all there was to it. 

From Mountain Man
By Vardis Fisher