In Spatial Terms

The last few days (especially yesterday - I did a lot of driving an skiing) I have been thinking about how we perceive space. Pretty much, we look at it in terms of lines - those lines being the roads that we drive on and live off of. However, this can't be how things were in spatial terms forever, because we didn't always have roads. Sure the Romans had some, but thorughout most of the Middle Ages they were in disrepair. Rather, the forests were what we had to navigate, and seafarers traversed currents and wind trends. That is a big shift from some seeming random events to the predictably linear roads we now live.

So then, would recreational skiing ever have been accepted in the non-linear world of today? I doubt it. Recreational skiining implies lines, because all trails are fixed lines. This also accounts for the appeals of glades (runs through trees with no cleared trails). Glades are a novelty at most mountains, and pretty popular, for no apparent reason except that they are different. They are different in that they don't adopt the contional linear trails practice but rather take caution in allowing people to ski freely (in fact many mountains heavily post warning about glades, becuase they are a bit more perilous than the open trails). I would describe glades as a modern event.

With the modernity of glades in mind I would propose that a certain mountain in Montana that only has glades, no conventional trails is thepostmodern ski mountain, finishing the progression from the classical to the denying postmodern. Any thoughts?