There was a great disturbance in the Force last weekend.  Throughout the nation faces were being painted, jerseys were taken out of closets and nacho platters were being sculpted.  Men and women gathered in front of TV screens the size of billboards to drink oceans of beer and scream at the top of their lungs at giant men colliding into each other.
    The NFL season had begun.
    Since I was a kid, the only professional sport I could really get into was football.  I always loved cheering my favorite teams, the Steelers (my dad grew-up north of Pittsburgh) and the Vikings.  Yes, I know, I grew-up in Wisconsin, but I was only 40 minutes from the Metrodome yet countless hours from Lambeau.  Plus, they weren’t the WISCONSIN Packers!!!  
    As I’ve grown, I’ve still loved football, but hardly ever find myself actually WATCHING games anymore.  I do listen to games, and read and watch highlights, and actually, I love football even more!  I think that’s because of all the outdoor activities which happen during the football season that make it so special.  Let’s take a look at a typical season:
    The real start of the season is the draft.  (I am always underwhelmed by free agency)  The injection of new blood into the league comes in the spring, almost always during the same weekend as Midwest Mountaineering’s Outdoor Adventure Expo in Minneapolis.  The spring expo is kind of the kick-off to the non-snow season.  It’s where you get to meet the icons of the outdoor world - legendary climbers, hikers, paddlers, skiers.  You can also attend talks about destinations, learn tips, visit organizations. 
    My favorite part is volunteering a shift at the Superior Hiking Trail booth - after a day of talking trail, I’m just chomping at the bit to get hiking.  After the expo I go back to my mom and dad’s to watch 16 hours of draft coverage.  Gotta see who is going to lead the Vikings to the promised land!  (Yeah, right!)
    Things are kind of quiet until the end of the summer when training camp begins.  That usually happens during paddling season.   Sometimes you return from a paddling trip to big NFL news.  I came out of the BWCA one year and stopped at the Ely Dairy Queen where we grabbed a newspaper to see what we had missed during the week.  There my buddy, who grew up a Lions fan in the outskirts of Detroit, was shocked to learn that Barry Sanders retired.  It almost ruined his whole trip! 
    Another time we were refueling at Sven and Ole’s in Grand Marais after a week in the canoe when I learned Korey Stringer had died at training camp.  Those shocking things always stick with you.  But it’s not always bad news - after a week and a half of hiking and camping national parks from Theodore Roosevelt to Yellowstone to Grand Teton to the Badlands, I was in the Mount Rushmore parking lot when my sister told me she had watched Brett Favre’s debut as a Viking.  ***OMG!!!  WHAT???!!!***
    At last, the preseason ends and the real games begin.  And with that - the fall hiking season!  We spend nearly all of September and October on the North Shore hiking the Superior Hiking trail in full Technicolor!  As we hike we will many times talk about the slate of games for the weekend and often our Sunday hikes will end in mid-afternoon which gets us to the trail-head at about halftime.
    Then we get to listen to the great Paul Allen call the action on our drive home.  It’s usually a very enjoyable experience but last year was horrible.  For the first several weeks of the season we would come out of the beautiful Sawtooth Mountains with the Vikings having a commanding lead.   Then our entire drive would be spent listing to the Vikes come apart and lose the game!  Arrrghh!!!
    Once we get about two-thirds through the season we come to deer hunting.  In Wisconsin we get the entire Thanksgiving week to hunt which means we get two sets of Sunday games, a Monday night and the two Thanksgiving games to enjoy during the hunt.  The only bad thing is that we hunt with die-hard Packer fans who sometimes leave the woods early in order to catch the games. 
    Once, we were tracking a buck my dad had shot Thanksgiving morning for hours.  At about noon, our buddies excused there selves so they could get home in time for kickoff.  No matter, my dad and I had a great day in the woods together, and he finally did bag his buck.  I got mine the next morning.
    Just as the regular season winds down, the ski season begins.  It’s the best time of year to watch football, not just because it’s the playoffs, but ski chalets usually have TVs!  In 2009, we watched the Vikings beat the Cowboys in the Giants Ridge chalet - actually spending the whole three hours inside glued to the set while wearing our ski boots! 
    But as Vikings fans, it can be very frustrating, of course.  I listened to Darin Nelson drop a pass in the end zone that would have sent the Vikes to the Super Bowl while getting on the chairlift at Trollhaugen.  When they lost a playoff game in 1999, I was skiing at Snowbowl, Mont. and would get updates from the lift operator after every run.
    The worst playoff loss, however was the infamous Gary Anderson miss.  I was on a plane from Missoula, Mont. which happened to stop in Billings to pick up passengers.  The whole plane unloaded and ran to the airport bar to catch the action.  It was just going into overtime when the gate agent told us to board or be left behind.  We begrudgingly did, and when the plane finally made it to cruising altitude, the pilot announced that the Falcons were going to the Super Bowl. 
    A large groan swept over the Minneapolis-bound plane, save a lone passenger clapping - which was quickly silenced.  That put a sour taste on an otherwise epic ski trip.
    The season ends, of course, with the Super Bowl.  Never, in my conscious memory, has it featured my Vikings.  No matter.  I still have many great memories of skiing on Super Bowl Sunday before the game.  Once, I went to a Super Bowl party in Bozeman, Mont. where I found that Bridger Bowl is actually “Spirit Mountain West!” 
    The house I went to was filled with people I had either skied with or recognized from the Spirit chairlifts through the years.  Apparently a whole generation of kids who had skied and snowboarded Spirit during their high school years had went on to Montana State!  It was pretty cool!
    But the most impressive Super Bowl memory was in 1997.  After a weekend of skiing a storm that had dumped over a foot and a half of fluffy powder in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we were making our way back home.  By the time we reached Superior, Brett Favre was just about to lead the Packers to their first Super Bowl since the Vince Lombardi days. 
    Superior was a ghost town.  No cars were on the road ANYWHERE!  The vibe was just electric.  And the game I listened to as I made my way back to the Range was great.  I’m just glad I was out of town before the celebration began.
    So begins another season.  And I am absolutely positive I will be watching my Vikes playing in the Super Bowl this February from the discomfort of my ski boots! 
    Here we go!!!