Wholistic Fitness

Typical of small mountain towns, Flagstaff’s local ski area has been going through years of legal battles in order to be the first ski area to use 100% reclaimed-water for snowmaking. The local “Native Americans” and “Environmentalists” are up in arms over using what they call, “poop water” upon the Sacred Peak for such trivial activity as skiing.

photo: i crank a few sacred turns at the Arizona SnowBowl. truly, i cannot imagine my life without skiing in it. i bow to Telemark County, Norway…the birthplace of skiing. great photo by Ananda!
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There are psychologic, physiologic, and practical advantages to skiing on “pee-pee snow.”

Consider a few:
1) Far deeper inspiration to become a more skilled skier…WAY faster!

2) If you do fall? Complimentary “Urine Therapy”.

3) Can finally scratch out the ‘don’t’ in all those, “Don’t Eat Yellow Snow” stickers.

With our predictable tendency toward obesity and AmeriKanistic drama, we are ignoring the arrow point Teaching of the snowmaking issue: The first and indelible Rule of all Environmental Health begins within our own body:
“Garbage in, Garbage out.”

If we eat sacredly?
We ski on sacredness.

If we eat cleanly?
We ski on clean snow.

If we chronically feast upon foul-smelling, synthetic, processed junk?
We ski on the same substance.

i give you
The Modern Sacred Hoop:
Eat consciously, appropriately, and sacredly and we will act consciously, appropriately, and sacredly…even during difficult, confusing situations.

It all boils down – again, and again, and endlessly again – to our integrity in conscious choices and engaged appropriate actions.

All this high and mighty finger pointing and yelling and vandalizing like sugar-addicted kids about “what’s sacred and what’s not” by we who cannot create a “Stink Beetle” yet create Gods by the dozens reflects a spiritual immaturity that even Dook’o’sliid herself shakes with thunder at our pettiness and ignorance!

The Seen World exists for our spiritual progress. That includes snowmaking as well as basket-weaving. It’s what we do with the External World that matters.

As our entire Turtle Island Tribe continues to kill itself each day through obesity and lack of healthy exercise, we blind ourselves to the fact that obesity itself is a by-product of spiritual dis-ease. We waste our spit talking about frozen water particles more molecularly healthy than the food that most Americans eat or the air that we breathe. I know by direct personal and professional experience that skiing is Big Medicine for the soul. I have found that perhaps the most authentic SweatLodge is cardiovascular exercise, such as skiing. It heightens our chances for spiritual appreciation far more than does eating and drinking ourselves into oblivion watching TV.

Let’s balance the Talking Stick with the Sweating Stick. Let’s turn our eyes inward for sacredness, not just upward.

I recall a profound moment with R. Carlos Nakai after a gig beneath the San Juan Mountains of my childhood home in Durango,
“Your name is Steve, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Were you born here on Turtle Island?”
“Yes sir, I was,” I replied nervously before the great Navajo-Ute flutist. His beautiful face then opened into a huge smile and told me with eyes sparkling like summit snows,
“Then, you ARE Native!”

Snowmaking is not a “Native” issue. Nor is it a “Save the Peaks” issue. It’s a Warrior’s chance to make spiritual progress in harmony within the Dance of It All.

om so ti,
coach steve ilg