At the tender age of 18, Chad Sayers chooses to pursue the perilous existence of a professional skier. Successful, he rides a wave of celebrity, sponsorship, and world travel. But he soon finds that “living the dream” is also a tiring treadmill of daily risk that isolates him from those he’s closest to.

 

Action-sport photography reflects the way most of the world lives: experience-driven and seeking validation. The subject of a thousand captures of gravity-driven motion in movies and magazines, Sayers is, yet isn’t, exactly what he appears to the public. As injuries and emotional traumas accrue behind the scenes, his identity fractures into a hall of mirrors—flickering images of athlete, family member, traveler and seeker veil the reality of someone running blindly from heartbreak and physical debilitation. Then one day in the Alps, hanging by a finger above certain death, Sayers sees the one reflection that scares him straight: a man who no longer cares.

 

To heal this severed umbilicus to reality and the constant physical pain he lives with, Sayers quits skiing and turns to travel, surfing and photography. Will it be enough? Will he return to the mountains? He doesn’t know.

 

The story comes together in a miscellany of recollections, soul-searching and mind-boggling imagery. Through the eyes of the world’s greatest outdoor photographers—and the lens of his own camera—readers not only see the high-stakes gambits required by a pro skier to stay in the spotlight, but also the grandeur of the stage on which these play out. In the end, redemption for Sayers is being able to embrace his journey much as the reader does—seeing himself doing what he loves in the places he finds most sacred.