I picked up the book, opened it and read the first line: “Photography has not changed since its origin except in technical aspects, which for me are not a major concern.” The author, Henri Cartier-Bresson, is a transcendent figure in photography. So that statement in his book The Mind’s Eye comes with some heft.

I read that line, sat back and I thought of skiing. To my knowledge, Cartier-Bresson did not ski. Nor did anything in that sentence, or in the entire book, have anything to do with skiing. But something about “not changing except in technical aspects....” No, that’s got nothing to do with cross-country skiing. Or everything to do with it.

It’s been over a year since I read that line and I’m still not certain which it is: nothing or everything.

Everything changing seems the easy choice. Good lord, what has not changed? Where we ski and how we ski and the very skis we use are different. Trail grooming, trail design, what we wear. Boots and bindings, poles and waxes, skate skis and classic skis. Knickers begat tights, wool gave way to synthetic, wood skis made way for fiberglass only to be replaced by carbon. Absolutely every single thing about the sport has changed.

Or nothing about skiing has changes. Nothing of consequence, anyway. Not since our earliest ancestors strapped on wide, ungainly boards with upturned tips, stepped from the hearth and home and pushed off into the cold. And floated and glided in a fashion. Our forefathers skied out of necessity, maybe wonder and, over time, with joy. That started the long and winding lineage that led to us modern heirs of an ancient art.

My generation

I am of an age that I first skied on wooden skis with leather three-pin boots and bindings. And with Tonkin poles, cotton long underwear, knickers if we were sufficiently committed, blue jeans otherwise. I skied and some of you skied on such relics. I skied on that gear and then the gear changed. And changed again. I came to mock that old gear, those woodies and three-pins; grew to look with scorn on the antiques that they became, filled was I with the snobbish elitism and in possession of new gear more fitting of a modern age and a modern man.

Then came skating, skiing reinvented, equipment revamped, trails and technique skewing off in new directions. What change was more substantial than that?

Nothing changed except in the technical aspects? Ha! Not with skiing. It all changed, every single bit of it. And for the better. Let the troglodytes say otherwise, fools that they were.

Except there was this; Nothing had changed about the love I felt for the sport. Nothing had changed about the sheer joy of glide. Nothing had changed about the first spark of sunrise striking new snow. Nothing had changed about what the sport touched in me, touched in so many of you, deep and pure and steady. Nothing of that had changed since I first put on my dad’s wood skis and pushed off into a new world. Nothing had changed except, dare I say, the technical aspects. Funny how that works.

Shake your head and call me a fool if you will. It won’t bother me much. I’ve been called worse. I’ll still love to ski, fool or not.

I’ll acknowledge without hesitation that the technical aspects have changed and for the better. I do, after all, sell ski gear every winter and I’ve seen it get better. Way better. The new stuff is really, really good. Only a true fool would argue that fact. There are, when it comes to change and innovation, two types of fools: Those who think that because something is new it is better, and those who feel that because something is tried and true, i.e. old, it is better. Delve only casually into skiing gear and you will find both truisms. On which side of the divide do you stand?

I can say without fear of contradiction that the skis today are very good. The new boots and binding are so much better and make learning to ski so much easier. From a technical aspect of efficiency and form, I ski better now than I ever did decades ago.

Very few of us will ski to our end days on the same skis. I would argue that none of us will, but every winter I talk with skiers who still find life in their wood skis. I tried for years, – hell, for decades – to show them the error of their ways. I demonstrated the flex of the new fiberglass skis, caressed the silky-smooth bases of the new models and invited them to do the same. I cajoled them, gave them skis to try out, coaxed and patiently explained the differences. A few tried the new skis, the synthetic ones most of us now take for granted. Most were polite but expressed their hatred for the new-fangled ones. They liked wood and they stuck with it. And they loved the sport no less than the other skiers who took to the new gear. Over time I learned to shut up.

So a few of us will ski to the last on the same skis with which we started. More of us will try different skis and employ various techniques. We will skate and we will stride, in tracks and out. We will amass a collection skis and boots and memories of the same. We will see changes come and we will react accordingly, using new gear and different clothing as we feel the need. We will see change and live change and embrace change.

And yet will the love we feel for the sport ever change? Will those feelings deep and powerful, that we felt at the beginning, will they change? Will that pure magic in our lives be altered by the pesky technical aspects?

Has anything important really changed?

I read again that single line Cartier-Bresson wrote about photography not changing except in technical aspects. No mention of cross-country skiing there. No, nothing to do with cross-country skiing. Nothing at all.

Or everything.

Mitch Mode started cross-country skiing some 35 years ago. He has skied every Birkie since 1978 but no longer races. He is the co-owner of Mel’s Trading Post, a sporting goods store in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, named after his late father who started the business in 1946.

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