A NOVEL PATRIARCHY

The Aspen groves on Buffalo Pass, near Steamboat, CO, provide some of the best powder skiing in the country. The trees are perfectly spaced, and just like life, they require adept quickness to navigate the maze. The received wisdom is that we look at the spaces, not the trees, to determine where to go, relying on decades of training to direct our skis to carry us safely and joyously along one of many possible emergent paths.

This photo was taken just weeks after my mother passed, and I am now the leader of our family – the oldest surviving child. All my ancestors now inhabit realms beyond the physical.

Most people would have selected the epic image of me in deep-pow mid-turn valor. The notion of the patriarchy is typically associated with images of king-like men in the foreground, in bright colors and the trappings of power and control.

We know control is an illusion, and also that we are a modest part of this world, and not its master. This photo not only reminds me of my relative scale in the great mystery, but also that I am ultimately interconnected with nature and part of a collective wisdom and human consciousness – just like this family of Aspens, all joined in life and death by one root system.

It’s true, I’m now unequivocally the penultimate leader in my family. And I get to hold it as part of a much larger and more beautiful whole; small, in the natural scope of things.