As a young boy, I proudly announced my career intentions to my father.

“Dad?” I said, puffed up with pride and ambition, “When I grow up, I am going to be a skier… and an astronaut.”

The depth of wrinkles on my dad’s brow was a family joke, and one that spelled out an answer before he even spoke.

“Son, you can’t do that.”

I spent my adolescence devising ways to both spend life in the mountains and avoid giving my dad a reason to ever make his disappointed face. So, in the interest of science and making my parents proud, consider this a long-overdue melding of science, literature and snow.

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