When the bombs drop in Whistler
My letter to the Editor of Pique Newsmagazine.
Read the full letter here — https://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/local-news/letter-when-the-bombs-drop-in-whistler-11993567
By FARHA GUERRERO
When the bombs drop in Whistler, there is a reverberation of joy. It echoes throughout the valley, and one knows that there’s only goodness to come.
Two weeks ago, while on the big Red Chair, the bombs were dropping one after the other. How wonderful, I thought. Tomorrow, surely, that white bundle of joy in the high alpine will await all of those powder hunters.
I know very intimately what bombs mean here. They are used for avalanche control after heavy snowfall. It’s the only place I can think of where something capable of lethal force signals happiness. When bombs are heard in Whistler, it tells all of us privileged enough to ski here that the mountain will be safe the next day.
That paradox has stayed with me since I moved here 12 years ago, when the Syrian war was in full force. I had written an op-ed piece then, struck by how bombs could mean something so different in two far places in the world.
This has never felt more true. That war is now a distant memory to so many of the others that have passed through our newsfeeds since. And yet each one, as horrific as it is, reminds us of our fragility, how as much as a conflict may seem distant, it always affects us. The irony of hoping that tomorrow the bombs will be dropped in Whistler after another winter storm, while so many people in the world right now are closing their ears, sheltering from them.
Here, we listen for them.