The hardest part of making this magazine is always these words, and this year didn’t get easier. I can’t help but feel a need to say something about loss or legacy, but I’ve just been circling the thought and simply putting it off. Then I hear Sammy’s voice in my head, “Not with that kind of attitude.”
Sammy was one of my best friends. On May 10th, while at a memorial service for Alex Pashley, I learned he was gone. Sunglasses on, I found comfort in the stories told about Pash—someone I’d spent time with in the mountains and worked closely with on past issues. It was a reminder of legacy.
Alex Pashley, Jeff Keenan, and Sammy Rowse loved snowboarding. And fuck, did they leave some cool stuff behind. Their vision echoes in board graphics, photos, videos, and edits we’ll watch again and again. This is the tangible stuff they added to our culture. Oh, and bumper stickers, one of Sammy’s true passions.
This book is our attempt at something similar. It’s not perfect, but in the process of making it, I keep coming back to another Sammy-ism: “You know what, there’s nothing wrong with it.” He’d blurt this out about something he loved, a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of imperfection.
Torment is the sum of many individuals’ dedication to snowboarding. Those parts live in these pages, making it whole. We do it because we believe this stuff is worth archiving, and it’s something we can be proud of. It doesn’t start that way though. Every year I go in circles, asking what exactly we are creating and why it matters. As we process our new lives without the people who helped shape them, the answer lies in what they were doing. Snowboarding, and creating from the pure love of it; bringing into existence what was once not there. Their energy and presence itself was art and what they created became the stories we tell.
A circle is a funny thing. Go around it and you end up where you started. But tilt it up, give it a push, and it rolls. And it’ll keep rolling as long as you let it. Maybe that’s what this year is about: pushing forward, upright, carrying momentum to create. What we make endures, even if that’s easy to forget.
Last spring in Jackson I saw a bumper sticker: “May the wind always be at your back, the sun upon your face, and may the winds of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars.” A rare Sammy piece in the wild. Keep an eye out. The good ones are good forever.
— Ian Boll
