4.5: Skiing as CRIME & PUNISHMENT

CRIME & PUNISHMENT Pt 2 (Part IV to Epilogue): Dickens, Dostoevsky, & Aprés Stress

In an irony stronger than sanitizer, I finished Crime and Punishment on a skiing vacation in Utah.

While reading about 19^th century St. Petersburg, where nobles sweat their clothes yellow and peasants drink away their lives, I’m in a palatial house situated for sixteen with a shed sauna-gym and an outdoor hot tub.

My hate-appreciate relationship with skiing has taken five years and a decent amount of spite and tears. But at the end of the trip, when the group chat sends the Airbnb listing for next year, I ogle the saturated photos of the lofted rooms, A-line windows, and honey-colored wood on the basement walls.

That house for sixteen would be a really nice place to be alone, I think.

Poof. I throw a heart on the message. I’m signed up. I daydream about a nonexistent, book-heavy vacation for six months.

When people warn about the ski pass prices rising, I think, Hmm? Oh. OH. That. The ski part of the ski trip. I hold the daydream alive, imagine the house emptied of skiers on the mounta…