Some days you don’t notice it, but most days you do. 

No matter if it’s August or February, you foolishly dream of the day you’ll be able to slash a powdery turn on this gentle slope along the highway you pass everyday on your way to work. 

It’s the bluff next to a river, a gentle slope next to the highway created by construction workers three decades ago or simply just the highest point in a long meadow. 

Yes, we’ve all been there. Longing for the nonexistent perfect confluence of events that leads you to the top of that spot on the snowiest day of the year, ready to make turns on the slope you’ve seen every. damn. day. 

People in the mountains are spoiled. They have endless, eye-catching lines that dwarf the lines of our Midwestern dreams. Many mountain people have the lifestyles that allow them to actually go get those lines, too. 

Here, in the flatlands, we can only watch videos and try to remember what those lines look like. For us, the best we can get is that gentle, possibly skiable slope we see on our daily drives.

Will it ever get enough snow to shred? Is it even enough of a slope for two turns? Can you imagine the looks you’d get when you’re on top of 25 vertical feet on the side of the highway in full gear? 

The answers to those questions don’t matter. What’s important about this futile exercise is that you keep dreaming. 

“I could shred that,” is something I get to say to myself every day on the way to and from the office. 

Will the day ever come that I finally go shred that? I don’t know the answer to that, but I know I could. And daydreaming about skiing is sometimes the best we’ve got.