One of my favorite experiences period (not just with multimedia) was going skiing out of bounds with a group of friends  that included a Parks Ranger named Tod when I was a ski bum in Alberta, circa 1990.  It was a a dangerous thing to do, but being 21 years old means that danger doesn’t have much meaning, so off we went into the Rockies just west of Lake Louise. Tod was very good at this and told us how to survive the experience. “No talking,” he said sternly. “No breathing loud. NO YELLING (we could all hear the capital letters).  We go one at a time. Do not cross tracks with anyone. Turn on your PIEPS right now. Do as I do. Because if you don’t and the avalanche doesn’t kill us, I will kill you.” Best skiing of my life.

He showed us how to find safe snow by looking for crusty fields. If we found one we kept looking for fluff. He would break a piece of it off of the rest to show us how not to be fooled by its looks. He did a lot of teaching by showing, not talking, following his own advice. This more than his lectures impressed on me how truly dangerous our situation was.

He was using objects and scenes from our environment to teach us how to stay alive and have fun in a place only a few people ever go to, the back country of the Rockies. He showed us how to use our telescoping ski poles to look for buried friends in a crosshatch pattern to cover ground efficiently. He showed us how to dig our mouths out first to help us breath. He showed us how to dig safely around a person so as not to skewer them with a shovel. It was an experience that I drank every moment of with the knowledge that I would remember it forever. Somehow the danger of it all made it far more interesting.

The only way that it could have been even more epic was if there had actually been an avalanche that we were not caught in. Though I have since seen my share of them, I still for some reason wish that there had been one that day, just to help Tod make his point.