Author hits a few bumps with ski book

FIRST TRACKS, STORIES FROM MAINE’S SKIING HERITAGE by Glenn Parkinson, Spectrum Printing, Auburn, Maine, 59 pages, $15.95

Downhill skiing historically has been one of the more expensive recreational sports in the lives of those who enjoy the outdoors. Skis, boots, bindings and warm-weather gear are only a part of the cost, considering people also have to spend big money just for the right to use the ski lifts at any of the region’s numerous ski areas.

When you consider the high-cost reputation the sport of skiing has, then it’s not all that surprising that “First Tracks, Stories from Maine’s Skiing Heritage,” by Glenn Parkinson, would carry a $15.95 sticker price — despite it being nothing more than a flimsy, 59-page, soft-cover book.

However, in much the same way a skier might complain about shelling out $45 for a one-day lift ticket only to find a mountain buried in ideal packed-powder conditions, reading through “First Tracks” is also a pleasant surprise.

Parkinson, a Vermont native and lifelong skier now employed as a financial consultant in Portland, is a self-admitted skiing historian, and “First Tracks” proves it. The author offers up 10 sections of stories and tidbits — an array of informational and amusing tales ranging from double-diamond excellence to beginner-trail boring.

The book begins like an exhilarating first run, with Parkinson’s first chapter, “The Skidor Arrive,” taking us back to the early 1800s when state legislator Widgery Thomas attracted 51 Swedes to settle in Aroostook County — in a town thereafter dubbed New Sweden. The Swedes brought with them a mode of winter travel — skidors.

“Originally, there was a considerable difference in the length of the skis,” Parkinson writes. “The shorter ski, the andur, was used to push and the longer ski to glide on. The result was much like a kid riding a scooter.”

Skiing in Maine had been born.

“Dope is King” — the second chapter — is equally as interesting as Parkinson details the story of Frank Stewart, a Skowhegan native who left the state in 1851 in search of gold in the California mountains. Stewart ended up finding his own gold mine, as he developed his own brand of ski dope, a k a ski wax, which was used with much success by early ski racers.

Ditto for Parkinson’s effort with “The Warden is Coming” — chapter three of the book — which tells the story of Frederick Jorgensen, a warden from the early 1900s who got around his territory courtesy of a pair of skis.

“The Carnival Craze” — which makes up chapter five of the book — is a delightful look back at the old days of wintertime, much of it based around the 1920s when many Maine towns and cities began to hold highly successful winter carnivals. From Portland to Fort Fairfield, the author takes the reader back to these carnivals in imagination-catching detail, bringing what he describes as “the social events of the season” to vivid life.

Beyond those stories, however, the rest of the book is like skiing loose granular trails, a feel that can leave the reader skidding to a stop.

The chapter titled “Maine Snow Trains,” a section which seemed to invite the same history-provoking senses as “The Carnival Craze,” falls flat. The section is a little too long and a tad too stretched out to hold the reader’s interest.

A section dubbed “Lost Maine Ski Areas” is nothing more than fodder, recapping many since-closed ski areas with tidbits of information that would interest only those who might remember a certain area and entertain even fewer of those people.

All told, “First Tracks” would be a recommended read for the ski buff with a sense of history. Check your local library or leaf through the book at a local bookstore before buying it because with that price tag, a disappointed reader might be left with a feeling that would be the literary version of skiing on machine-made snow.