Earlier this month I was setting up microphones in my recording studio at Kiln Gateway, a bit nervous about my Ski Utah “Last Chair” podcast interview that day. The topic was diversity, a subject I tackle at least once a year.
It’s no secret that skiing as we know it is not known for its diversity, though that is evolving. I had come armed with all the stats. I was prepared to discuss the benefits of diversity-boosting programs like Ski Utah’s Discover Winter or SOS Outreach and Youth Sports Alliance right here in Park City. I was well familiar with the 50-year history of the National Brotherhood of Snowsports. Still, I was nervous.
Settling behind the microphones, my two guests were beaming — excited to talk about a sport they both had come to love. Meanwhile, I was still plotting in my mind how to weave my way through an interview on diversity. Would I use the right words? Would I say something inappropriate? Most of all, what point would I make?
But from the opening exchange, I realized this wasn’t about diversity at all. It was about two people who simply loved skiing. It was about the joy of the sport. My guests had this wonderful feeling in their hearts about being up on a snow-covered ridgeline, soaking in everything Mother Nature had to offer.
Mark Giles and Domeda Duncan are two truly wonderful people. They are no different than many of us who have transplanted our lives to Utah and are seeking to extract the most enjoyment from the experience. Together, they form the nucleus of the OurSundays Ski and Snowboard Club, a new affiliate of the National Brotherhood of Sports in Utah.
I had met Domeda a few months earlier during a Ski Utah party at the Stio Mountain Studio on Park City’s historic Main Street. She was bubbly, outgoing and eager to talk skiing as we browsed the brightly-colored parkas. I had posed the concept of a podcast, and she quickly jumped at the chance.
Domeda grew up in Detroit, where she had an opportunity to ski with the Jim Dandy Ski Club, one of the original NBS clubs in America. She hadn’t carried skiing into adulthood. But when moving to Utah, she wanted to embrace everything about the mountains, including skiing.
Mark grew up in Florida. He jokes that the closest he ever came to the sport was jet skiing in the ocean. Like Domeda, he moved to Utah and figured skiing was something Utahns did. They both enrolled in Ski Utah’s Discover Winter, a program designed to help introduce skiing to Black adults.
Living in a ski town offering over 60 ski lifts within a few minute’s drive of our homes, it’s easy to take the sport for granted. Sure, we love it. We enjoy sliding down the snow and looking out at the Uintas. It’s a place to meet up with friends and share time with our family.
But in my conversation with Mark and Domeda, I could see their eyes glowing as they talked about their newfound love for skiing. Domeda said, “There is nothing like knowing the night before that you’re going to go skiing the next day.”
Mark tells the story of his instructor trying to get him to look up from his skis. While the instructor was making a point about technique, Mark saw it as an eye-opening opportunity to soak in beauty he had never seen before: “Just seeing how the snow was draping the other peaks and the other mountains off in the distance. It brought a sense of tranquility for me and just calmness.”
I soon threw most of my mental notes on diversity out the window and went with the flow. We talked about summer picnics and pre-ski tailgates at Brighton.
A few years ago on my podcast, Parkite Lamont Joseph White — an artist whose paintings of Black skiers and snowboarders have been instrumental in starting positive discussions on diversity — told me something that has really stuck. Whether it’s skiing or any activity, each of us who participates brings something to the cultural table of that activity.
Following that interview, I became more conscious about enjoyment as I skied. I took Mark’s advice and looked up to soak in the view, gazing across the Jordanelle toward the High Uintas as I carved turns down Stein’s Way.
And somehow, I couldn’t stop thinking about Domeda’s buttermilk pancakes on the griddle to kick off a Big Cottonwood ski day.