Bob McCallister( Kooster), Photo by Barry Epstein
in my eyes. All of a sudden we hit tree line and had to dodge many trees. Then we had to abruptly stop at the edge of a cliff. We caught our breath and looked down and it was super scary. Kooster had paralleled skied down in perfect form. When he got to the bottom he yelled up, go for it Barry. My strategy was to try and traverse the slope but I was too afraid to even do that and point one ski downward but I managed to do this for a couple of times. Kooster kept calling out and I said, fuck it, I’ m going. With that I set both skies downward and I made two of the best parallel turns of my life, but then I rolled head over skis for quite a very long distance. I survived without breaking my neck but then struggled for hours though very deep snow and steep slopes to finally get to the bottom.
service that needed the car in Anchorage. They had a small two seater Fiat ready to go and all we needed to do was to pay for gas and tolls. We set off from New Milford, New Jersey and had a 7 week experience of a lifetime that took us more than 7,000 miles.
We had bought a ceramic pipe that fit very nicely on the dashboard. Yes, you guessed it. The pipe rarely went out as we smoked dope for quite a long way. The first night was somewhere in Michigan where we tracked down an old girlfriend of mine who was attending university and we partied the night away with her and her room mate. Oh yeah, it will be difficult to forget that night. We then drove to Telluride Colorado to visit my long time school buddy and well known blue grass musician Kooster( Bob McCallister). He took us up to the top of this ski mountain and scared the crap out of us. Dick and I were probably green to blue level skiers and we were now on a double or possible triple black diamond slope way above the 12,900 foot tree line. We were traveling so fast on the top of the mountain that I couldn’ t see much as the tears were
About two years prior, Dick, John Vitek and I visited Kooster when he was living just outside of Aspen, Colorado. Kooster took us on an incredible 4 hour hike up to a place called the Maroon Bells and Cathedral Lake. We ate hallucinogenic peyote buttons for the entire time and smoked some incredible pot as we ascended above tree line of 12,900 feet. We sat back and looked over hundreds of miles of mountain peaks and I connected with this spiritually. I could
Ed Pacio, Mill Valley, California Photo by Barry Epstein
BARRY STEVEN EPSTEIN- PhotoAutobiography DRAFT 35 of 156