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Hi y'all, I'm a skiing enthusiast + backcountry skier in Southwestern Colorado, and I wrote this piece for [Vox.com](http://Vox.com) about some complicated feelings about skimo hitting the Olympic stage that I think this community might identify with. Would love for y'all to read it and let me know what you think. I'll be available in the comments to chat about it. 

Skimo’s Olympic debut is — for me, and a lot of people in my community who similarly love pushing into side and backcountry terrain — a spotlight shining on something I love at the very moment it’s becoming harder to hold onto.

For years, skinning up a quiet road or tree glade through the woods was a way — *the* way — I most connected to the natural world and found balance in myself. It made me love winters. In the places in western Colorado where I’ve been lucky to live, skiing has carved out space to enjoy hours and hours of sun and solitude and brisk air.

Now, I’m writing this nine months pregnant with my first, a girl, watching another unseasonably warm February unfold in southwestern Colorado (for my FOMO at least, it’s a good winter to be pregnant!). The ridgelines that have steadied me for years look patchy — browner, more exposed than they should with the thin amount of snow covered we’ve received so far. I’m thinking not only about the winters that shaped me, but about the ones my daughter will inherit.



Skimo makes its Winter Olympic debut — at the most tragic time