I started skiing at age five from the backyard into the Yukon wilderness. I followed my big brothers into the boreal forest, gliding through the crisp cold snow, discovering a freedom that would shape our lives. Decades later we still ski together. Adventures in wilderness are a way of staying grounded, a return to balance, a shared centre that holds us steady.

What’s your connection to the land? For me and my brothers, it is core to who we are. Even as kids in North Vancouver, the wilderness was our playground but it was moving to the Yukon that opened our eyes. Endless stretches of untouched land and a living, breathing sky. I was five and my brothers seven, and we were dwarfed by the immensity of it all. The auroras danced like spirits overhead, and howls in the night reminded us of our place at the edge of civilization. Beyond the backyard was only the wild.

Our backyard extended into the forest and past a small lake. I still remember falling through the ice and fearing drowning - an experience that taught me just how wild the wild can be. I chased the moments of glee that came from gliding down the rolling hills we climbed. Feeling alive as the arctic air frosted our breath as we glided through the backcountry stashes skirting the edges of the wild.

You see, out there - away from civilizing safety, we fall into nature’s rhythms. Only in the quiet, can we hear our hearts calling. The land lays us bear, initiates us and reveals our purpose, passion and shows us our gifts. The things we bring with us into this life, and leave as tracks in the snow along our path. The up hills and down hills. The frozen lakes and crackling streams. The forested slopes and glaciated peaks. It is the land that shows who we are.

Beyond the hype in snow sports there is shared stoke. The utter awe of these experiences connects us across generations, ski/snowboard options, and all the divergent styles to slide downhill. Those wild eyed frenzied wide smiles from pure unspeakable elation.

Poetry invites us to take a breath from the bombardment and stress of our daily lives. In a world where our attention is commodified and bought and sold across platforms we need places of cognitive refuge to escape to. Our own momentary fortresses of solitude. Like leaning into a carve on the side of a mountain. Getting out of our heads and into our flow. Living tao with beginner's mind. I invite you to seek out and cherish these sacred moments and focus on what is real. Punctuated purity of mind, body and spirit. Moving meditations to embrace all that is in the present moment.

Skiing into the wilderness from my backdoor became my way of sensemaking in a crazy world. It became a way of life. Connection to nature and risking a sense of adventure within it has been a contiguous thread throughout my life. Working extensively in backcountry guiding and adventure therapy has been a mere extension of my personal wellbeing practice of nature based immersion and dopamine hacking through sensation seeking activities. That big wild Yukon backyard inspired poetic moments of wonder. My truest self is the me that wanders the mountains reciting spontaneous poetry.

Solo adventures have their solemn place in the mix yet shared experiences are a greater joy. Myself and my like minded adventurers at Poet Skis want to share these moments of beauty. We want to bring poetry into everyday life and take deeper breaths while we behold the elegance of existence. We want to stand up and say “hell yes” to evolving ourselves into a kinder and gentler humanity one gesture at a time. This stories’ title references the poem come run savage from Poet Skis Core Collection, a poem scribed as an homage to the legacy of shared adventures with my brothers. It’s also an ethos infused at the core of the Poet

Skis movement to inspire.

We believe in making useful artefacts like skis and snowboards and some associated swag that inspire sacred connections to nature and creative expression. We aspire for Poet Skis to be a brand for people who see through material fixation and simply want the best tools made to suit their unique desires for playing in snow and writing their own poetry with movement and words. Surrendering to something greater like gravity comforts our existential burden of staving off death so that we can just live in the moment, inviting emergent possibility. Be free, live poetry.

Come run savage with us!