Sunset over the Monashees

This picture is from last night, just after our arrival at the Monashee Powder cat-skiing lodge. Justin and I made the drive from Nelson to Cherryville, BC in about five hours, followed by an hour long rally up a bumpy dirt logging road behind Monashee’s big yellow school bus. We hopped into one of two cats parked at the end of the road, and continued up on snow to the backcountry lodge.

My grandpa always talked about sunsets and would film really special shots of sunsets in his travels around the world. So many beautiful colors and vistas, but it was the sunsets he captured over the Utah desert that really impacted me deeply. The shots were taken from behind the barbed wire of the Japanese-American internment camp which my family called home for over three years during WWII. He always said that his feelings of confinement fell backseat to the freedom that those desert sunsets could instill in him. To him, the sky could never be owned by anyone, and was shared by any and all.

Now, whenever I see a sunset, whether it be the pink and blue swirls over the Pacific Ocean or the bright orange alpenglow lighting up the mountains, I think of my grampy and the ultimate freedom that skiing and the open road have given me.

“Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.” – Elbert Hubbard

Tags: cat-skiing, Monashee Powder, Powder Highway, sunsets