Synopses & Reviews
Featuring 38 true-life stories of adventure and self-discovery, adrenaline, and honesty, a former professional NCAA downhill competitor reveals the soul skiers raison dêtre: finding exhilaration, faith, grief, love, and everything that truly matters amid the gloriously tangible, tactile, break-your-leg-if-youre-not-careful rocks, trees, and gullies of the alpine world. These essays, collected from numerous glossy ski and lifestyle journals, including Powder, Couloir, and Telemark Skier, celebrate the land of winter and the author's roles as mountaineer, ski racer, father, and all-around life enthusiast. His stories will appeal to anyone who has ever hit the slopes and felt the adrenaline rush of perching atop a steep precipice, knowing that skiing is the physical, emotional, and spiritual place where deep truths are explored and the graceful interaction of body and terrain answers back.
Review
“Its a select few who let their passion dictate their lifestyle. Doing so requires the sacrifice of a certain sense of normalcy, but the payback is tenfold in experiences that are extraordinary. Rothman is one of those few, and he articulates the highs, and lows, of that life choice perfectly in these pages. Living the Life is about one mans relationship with the mountains, but the stories are applicable to anyone who lets his passion lead the way.” —Derek Taylor, editor, mtnadvisor.com, and former editor, Powder
Review
“Poet, powderhound, musician, ex-racer, teacher, philosopher-all sides of Renaissance man David Rothman are on display in this collection, which ranges from satire to whimsy to the profoundly grateful and the essential questioning. Emerson? Check. Thoreau? Check. Petrarch? Only David Rothman would put Petrarch in a story about skiings 'earthly enjoyment.' In a voice that sparkles with intelligence, he is capable, in the end, of deep sincerity . . . David Rothman is a writer who skis and a skier who writes, very well.” —Peter Shelton, author, Climb to Conquer
Synopsis
Skiing--like surfing, fishing, sailing, mountaineering and climbing--is an environment sport. It doesn't come to us--we must go to the places where it happens. The ones who are most committed to these places, who fall deeply in love with mountains and the alpine life, are not only athletes, but rather people who have chosen to live their lives in a particular way. This is a book for all those people--for the skiers, the climbers, the alpinists and the people who love mountains and live in them, for all those who have ever lived that life or who dream of living it. In thirty-eight tales of adventure and self-discovery, adrenaline and honesty, Rothman reveals the soul skier's raison d' tre: to find exhilaration, faith, grief, laughter, love, and everything else that truly matters in the heart of the mountains.
About the Author
David J. Rothman is a former NCAA Div. I alpine ski racer, mountain sports journalist, and ski-and-snowboard-academy headmaster who currently teaches creative writing and composition at the university level. He is cofounder of the Crested Butte Music Festival and poet-in-residence for Colorado Public Radio. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.