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tack strau god of skiing book peter kray
"He dropped acid every day, living on beer and water, heading out on trekking skis where the slopes echo treeless as beaches, white and blue and beyond." (Photo: Courtesy of Peter Kray)

The Life and Times of Tack Strau

Peter Kray鈥檚 new novella, The God of Skiing, has a lot to say. We鈥檙e not quite sure what it all means, but we sure did enjoy the ride.

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(Photo: Courtesy of Peter Kray)

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We raced south along 285 from Clines Corners toward Roswell, New Mexico鈥攎e and my good friend Dave Cox and a truckful of good hunting dogs鈥攍ike Kerouac and Cassady and Ole Yeller. I read aloud from 鈥檚 new self-published novella, . It鈥檚 about Tack Strau who鈥檚, well, the god of skiing.

鈥淗e dropped acid every day, living on beer and water, heading out on trekking skis where the slopes echo treeless as beaches, white and blue and beyond. He was in the saddle of some perfect ridge with just his sleeping bag, a pot for coffee, and two bunks, and outside his hut was a crown of mountains.鈥

I told Dave this sounds like a lonesome quest for some unseen Valhalla. Dave nodded and urged me on. Words, feelings, emotions, flew by like the sage brush on the desert, and we were two souls destined for the emptiness of the great Chihuan unknown and a few scaled quail if the dogs could put us on the scent.

At one point, after a particularly lyrical passage about 鈥渁 monolithic menace reflecting the strife of eons,鈥 Dave said, 鈥淚 know how you hate purple writing.鈥

And I said 鈥淭his is more deep blue, and it鈥檚 kinda working for me.鈥

What do the words mean? I have no idea. Sometimes it鈥檚 not entirely clear that Kray does, either. But that鈥檚 OK. The book is loosely based on the fictional life of Tack, but Kray weaves in anecdotes from his own life鈥攇rowing up in Denver, attending college back east, and the several decades he鈥檚 spent pinballing around the globe writing about skiing. 鈥淚n order to tell what鈥檚 true, I made up a couple of things,鈥 he writes in the book鈥檚 introduction. 鈥淏ut only to balance out what I鈥檓 still afraid of telling. And I present the events as much by year as I do by season, which means you can call it a novel if that makes it easier to understand. Or a documentary. Or skiing鈥檚 double album.鈥

Whatever it is, it had me picking up olfactory hallucinations of Jet A and the bite of rotor wash, gauzy Instagrams captioned with corny Japuns from Hokkaido, Mister Mister playing over the speakers of every ski resort lodge northeast of West Virginia, and fantastic ski babes who like wolves are magnificent in the wild but dangerous to housebreak. Which is all to say, this book speaks to the soul of the skier rather than to the mind.

鈥淚t鈥檚 only two or three storms that separate a good season from a bad one,鈥 Tack said. 鈥淔our or five nights when the snowflakes run by the window like old friends with a bottle of Beam.鈥

As Allee Willis, the songwriter who collaborated with Earth Wind and Fire鈥檚 Maurice White on the epic wedding hit 鈥淪eptember鈥 recently , 鈥淚 learned my greatest lesson ever in songwriting from him, which was never let the lyric get in the way of the groove.鈥

With one thumb flick to my iPod, I cued up First Aid Kit鈥檚 鈥淢y Silver Lining,鈥 the next great ski anthem. And me and Dave drove on.

Lead Photo: Courtesy of Peter Kray

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