PLAY – IT’S NOT JUST FOR KIDS

O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales. –Leo

Rosten

When does the shift happen—the one where we go from carefree, laying-on-our-backs-watching-the-clouds-goby free time, just wanting to have a laugh with our pals to…that other thing? When and why do our lives seem to evolve away from everyday exploration and play? When does that begin: 18, 14, 10? Are we inadvertently steering our kids away from those pointless, unscheduled, unstructured good times as early as elementary school?

Play—real, purposeless, silly play—is everything but pointless. Heck, we’ll go as far as to say it’s essential to our existence. As we mark 20 years of Mountain Life magazines across the country this year, this issue of the Rockies mag is a nod to those existential, playful threads that have woven our mountain communities together over the past couple of decades.

In this issue, aerialist Sasha Galitzki illustrates impermanence as she dangles artfully amongst glaciers; writer Matt Coté witnesses cross-cultural play on the newly-minted Reconciliation Trail; photographer Agathe Bernard makes play her life’s work; and athlete Matt Hadley musters humour and ingenuity to continue to play to his strengths when confronted with a catastrophic injury.

This summer, we’ve got big plans for diving headfirst into newness, weirdness, wild and unruliness that takes us outside our comfort zone, the only goal being to risk failure for the sake of a laugh. Whatever the kid inside you is craving, we hope to see you out there answering the call.