Real Estate Corner: Beyond the trees

Winter is my favorite time of year. Without the bother of mosquitos or ticks, winter is when I most often spend time outdoors, and that has been true for most of my life. Growing up at the base of a ski mountain in a family of skiers almost single-handedly defined my childhood, and that enmeshment in the culture of skiing continued on into my adult years, where I spent almost all of my 20s working in the world of ski racing.

In the last few years, I have pulled away from skiing, mostly by my own choice as I look to redefine how it fits into my life. My love for the sport began to fade, rather quickly, and as it did, I started to question what that meant for my relationship with the place I’ve called home my entire life. So much of our existence in the Northeast is spent in winter, and I was beginning to resent the thing that was synonymous to me with wintertime. It may seem dramatic, but I had a bit of an identity crisis when I realized I no longer wanted to be so emotionally and physically invested in skiing. I began to ask myself questions such as, How will I feel about winter without skiing? Will I start to hate it here? Will I want to live here at all? These questions scared me, because I didn’t have the answers.