In a weird way, I feel like I'm losing a friend.
A podcast I've been listening to for over 10 years just posted its final episode. So today I went for a run and embarked on the two-part finale.
The skies are mostly clear with some scattered cloud-cover, but otherwise it's cool and breezy. Great running weather. Unsurprisingly, when I hit the waterfront, I find plenty of people spread out all along the shore. I spot a couple of beachgoers wrestling towels to the ground in the wind. One very cute and fuzzy German shepherd tries to help but, well... tug-of-war is probably not what the owner had in mind.
The episode I'm listening to is an interview with legendary big-mountain skier, Seth Morrison. This is a skiing/snowsports podcast called The Powell Movement, hosted by Mike Powell. Before launching the podcast, Mike forged a career in the industry by climbing the ladder at K2.
While I'm listening to them talk about Seth's early rise to ski-town notoriety, I'm picturing my own foray through mountain-town life. When I was working at NOLS in Wyoming, I used to use the gym in the basement at lunch. Often, I'd do a sprint workout on the rower and then some kind of metcon. And I remember listening to The Powell Movement during a lot of those sessions. When I lived and worked in Jackson, I'd listen in the mornings on the bus to work at the mountain. When driving off on some adventure to Montana, Colorado, or Utah, I listened to a whole lot of TPM episodes. I even remember listening while driving back from Utah in a blizzard after passing my AASI Level 2 exam.
Years later, I listened to plenty more episodes while training for the Boston Marathon along the lakeshore, right here, where I'm running right now. I'm jogging past the skatepark thinking about how crazy it is that so many of my memories include some guy on the other side of the country who decided to start a ski podcast in 2016. And then I inhale off-tempo when I realize I'm not sure I'd have started my own podcast had I not started listening to this one.
Reaching the overlook where I'm turning to head back, I decide to walk for a minute and look out over the water before continuing my run. There's an older couple sitting on the bench in front of me and a couple of women by the railing taking selfies together.
Now I'm thinking of all the folks Mike's interviewed over the years and how much they taught me. Skiers, snowboarders, mountain athletes, and action sports stars do the kinds of things that pay like shit right up until they don't. So, in order to "make it," many folks live in some pretty rough situations. Plenty of his guests on the pod have battled injuries, been dropped from sponsors, and eventually aged out of the higher-paying competitive circuit, too.
I'm not sure Mike or his listener-base would classify it this way but, for a podcast that says it's about snowsports, it seems to me like it's always been about grief and resilience. I kept tuning in all these years because I enjoyed hearing some of the world's most elite athletes talk about the obstacles they thought they were facing compared with what the real blockers turned out to be. They never quite framed it that way, but that's what I've always listened for. It's part of why my own publication came to be called Unobstructed.
As I shuffle my feet along the waterfront again, I start to feel it. The magnitude of this whole chapter coming to a close makes each step a little heavier. It feels like I'm losing a friend. I mean, I guess I am. Maybe it's... time.
10 years.
500 episodes.
That's one hell of a run.
I wonder what's next for him?
* * *
What's next for you?
onward.
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