I am currently lounging by the fireside in the common room at the Hotel Aparté, at the base of El Colorado, an hour and a half outside of Santiago, Chile. As I gaze through the frosted window I am amazed at the stunning beauty of this place; at the twinkling lights from the capital city in the valley- thousands of feet below us – and at how the seeming eternity of the Andes awes even the most seasoned mountain men. Most of all however, I marvel at my own forgetfulness.

This is not a new or singular occurrence however. In fact, it happens nearly every time, more than a couple inches of fine, dry snow falls from the sky, because I always seem to forget how much I love skiing powder. This morning for example, as I shivered on the first chair up to the top of El Colorado, I asked myself why on earth I was suffering so? Why torture my body in the pursuit of a simple fine white powder that doesn’t even come from Columbia? In short, I asked myself on this cold, miserable morning, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

In a matter of moments however, my questions were gone: all it took was one turn to remind me of the full body high that comes with skiing powder. At the bottom of the first run I was hyperventilating not from fatigue so much as from ecstasy; my forgetfulness forgotten. I hardly noticed my frozen face or aching toes and nothing on earth could have wiped the ear-to-ear smile off my face. So omnipotent was the pleasure that between runs we began trying to relate it to something more widely known. And predictably, sex became the analogy of choice.

Not to get graphic, but there is something that approaches irrefutable perfection while laying into an awesome run of powder just as you lay into… well, you get the idea. And in both cases, one of life’s finest balances must be struck. One must be deliberate while still letting things take their course. You have to be engaged but without over-intellectualizing things. Try for example, writing down, step by step, your every move on a first kiss. You can’t (or at least you shouldn’t). Then again, if you let yourself get too wild you’re likely to slobber all over a poor someone’s face. The same is true of skiing freshies: too much thinking and you forget your actually floating down a hill. Too mindless and you burry a tip only to taste cold, dry snow.