Instant Karma: The Heart and Soul of a Ski Bum

With the beauty and precision of a poet, Wayne Sheldrake examines his place in the close community of ski bums, people who give up normality to live on their own terms. Sheldrake's is a life of recklessness and restlessness, dedicated to adventure, courage, and the joy of second and third chances. He maps the hidden trails of virgin snow and conjures the rush of hucking off cornices and skiing blind in sudden snowstorms with exacting detail, all the while seeking to understand the bonds of romance, friendship, and learning to let go. In Sheldrake's universe, instant karma is what happens when we believe our grandest passion can t be separated from the everyday, and then live in accordance with that faith.

Customer Reviews:

An exciting adventure!

By Christa Joyce - November 13, 2007

Instant Karma, The Heart and Soul of a Ski Bum, Wayne Sheldrake. Ghost Road Press. Book Review by, Christa Mastrangelo Joyce

Few people have discovered how to live with the kind of reckless abandon that allows them to pursue life while looking death square in the eye. This is exactly the journey that Wayne Sheldrake reveals in his memoir, Instant Karma, The Heart and Soul of a Ski Bum. Sheldrake admits, "I was a little confused when I passed my twenty-fifth birthday. I never thought I'd live beyond twenty-four. I assumed my stunts would catch up with me, or my heart would just quit. But I was happy because I knew how I wanted to live and if I died in the process, so be it." The memoir follows this notion through Sheldrake's forty-odd years of life, unfolding into a poetic exploration of skiing and the revelation that daring is always worth the pursuit.

Instant Karma has plenty to get excited about. The descriptions of mountains covered with snow in the heart of... read more

Does one dare review - Karma ?

By Robert Linton "Dream Rebel" - December 23, 2007

Wayne has really captured the thoughts of most die hard skiers in this writing. But as I read the book, which I picked up - after meeting Wayne, where else; but on a ski Lift at Wolf Creek Pass ski resort, I realized that its meaing was deeper. I could see paralells into other aspects of daily lives.
Wayne is a great writer, who connects with the reader.
I am glad to have met him, and to have read Karma.

P.S. I am heading back out to Wolf Creek Pass this Holiday season, as they now have over 14 feet of snow.

Entertaining

By William Sidwell - June 1, 2010

I enjoyed reading this book about Sheldrake's life and those around him, surviving on low wages, and beg, borrowing and stealing to make ends meet. He highlights all those worst fears of any person whose profession relies on the full use of their body to earn a basic wage. After all, a serious injury (which Sheldrake seems to attract like steel to a magnet) would not only take his earning capacity away, but also the heart and soul of his existance.

His analysis into the cause of the accident where he crashed into the teenager had me questioning some times from my testosterone-fuelled skiing past, and I could see parts of me in the kid, and parts of me in Sheldrake.

Towards the end I was growing tired of the descriptive language being used, and I almost felt I was reading sentences passed through a word processor's thesaurus tool. That aside, it was an entertaining book, especially for fellow skiers.