ABSTRACT
I ski at a mountain resort called Sun Peaks, about 45 minutes north of Kamloops, a small city in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. I ski there a lot—fifty times a year, at least. My youngest son works and snowboards there too, so I know the resort well—including all the places where rebel teenage snowboarders may be shredding out of bounds. I am so familiar with the place that I am quite in tune with its spirit. I can also claim a more scholarly understanding of the spirit of Sun Peaks, having in 2011 written a book about the resort's 50-year history. It is quite an amazing place as it currently exists, but it is also marvelously full of spectral traces: First Nations history, geological fascinations, personal narratives, layers of built environments, animal life, rancher remnants, even a sort of manifest destiny. Sun Peaks has a beauty, an energy, a spirit all its own.
