Beautiful scenes from pro skier Mathieu Bijasson’s “Moon Line” show him sweeping down slopes and crags in the pitch black.
Perhaps knowing he couldn’t escape a sleepless night, Mathieu Bijasson did what all new parents do … went for a ski. Personally, I couldn’t help wondering if Bijasson’s midnight trip was a response to the pressures of parenthood. We’ve all heard of the runaway dad, but the ski-runaway dad?
Joking aside, Bijasson seems like an attentive father. His video, which depicts his famous night flight, explores the juxtaposition between fatherhood and his career as a free-ride skier. To the untrained eye, the events are just crisp and dramatic. I feel privileged to observe the video without points of professional jargon: aerial, halfpipe, traverse. The acts of Bijasson holding his baby daughter, handing her to his wife and his sliding and leaping down the mountain seem a fluid whole. Somehow tender and extreme, excessive and controlled all at once.
Yet the video is also fascinating in its use of borders. The events which seem so singular are also inevitably demarcated. The video description states, “Moon Line … focuses on [Bijasson’s] new outlook on life. With the arrival of his daughter and his new role as a father, Mathieu takes this passion and love for life and rethinks his approach to night freeskiing”. But however much this hints at a hybrid of personal interests/ career and parenthood, Mathieu puts his skis on outside his home and takes them off before he enters. His earthbound flight ends at the door of his domestic role as father, and he can never again pick it up without shifting weight, momentarily, to his wife. The video suggests that Mathieu’s “rethinking” of night freeskiing is merely an inclusion of his home and child, just a smooth lengthening of line. In reality, it will be a constant balancing act, an existence of borders which defies the smooth sweep of the ski.
It’s not just parenthood which shakes up skiing. Check out these dudes in Peru who took advantage of the excellent snow sports conditions – in the SAND!
