You're all poets.
Telemark skiing is the fullest striding and gliding and rising and falling experience I can imagine. The undulation, the burning, the DANCE, the closeness to the snow are all available in ways that nordic or downhill skiing don't have access to. And it's honest, it's slow-paced, it tells you to listen and feel and learn something each time you head out. It's also badass. It goes everywhere. It can be whatever you want.
Mr. and Mrs. R. Cakes of Keokuk, Iowa, said of skiing (before there was any distinction between cross-country and nordic backcountry): "Our principal interest in cross country skiing is that it is morally clean and healthful, and of course the snow is very sanitary"
I think that's pretty fun.
Hal Painter writes: “When I feel the need to rationalize, I rely lightly on the effervescent image that flies into my head from time to time: that of Zenmaster Suzuki Roshi laughing like hell in the Zendo at Tassajar Hot Springs as he explained to a gathering of monks and laymen such as myself. ‘cucumber is cucumber,’ he said, ‘and eggplant is eggplant.’ He laughed. This, he said, is the Zen way of getting along in the world. He laughed some more. I found myself laughing too. From the inside out. And so now I confide to myself, cross-country ski is cross-country ski, what trucking around in the snow does for my head is what trucking around in the snow does for my head – and if that’s cucumber, I’m laughing as I zig-zag through the cucumber patch.”
Maybe that will help.