Skip to main content

Skiing

I realize I don't talk about skiing enough on this blog. Its just a given. I go skiing. Pretty often. Not as often as I like or as I should, but pretty often. I went this weekend and this week. I go downhill skiing, park skiing, cross country skiing. I take friends who are newer to the sport and help them get better, or hang out with my guy friends and make jokes on the lift. Sometimes I go by myself and just feel good in my skin. Sometimes I go and end up helping someone who has fallen on a run. Sometimes I meet high schoolers or old schoolers on the lift. My guy friends tell me things on lifts they might not have mentioned if we were face to face. In mixed company. There's something about having a helmet and goggles on and being with someone you'd trust your life to that just opens things up differently. I love the relationships. I love my relationship with the mountain. Its ever changing states. The winds and views and different snow conditions.

A gal I know wrote recently about thinking that people who are parents and do extreme sports should reconsider when they become parents. I'm not sure I agree. Maybe to a point. But it would be like asking an artist to give up her palette for me to stop skiing steeps. To not take a chance here and there. Maybe its something you just can't understand if its not what you love. What you live and breathe.

I love the feel of skis beneath my feet. I mean, love. The feel of skis beneath my feet. I step into my skis and instantly become me. I love pushing against the ground and feeling my muscles making their presence known in my fun. Its exercise and cool and strong and confident. I don't have to pick out my outfit. I don't put makeup on. I just go. And fast. I love floating on a powder day. How you feel your skis lift up and down to turn instead of leaning side to side.

I love sharing it with others. I love to teach them and watch them grow in the sport. I like thinking about how to explain what you do with your body in simple terms that help someone get better. Help them access an ability they didn't have a moment ago. I love when they used to be afraid but they're not anymore: they're excited. I love that people feel confident they'll get better when I'm around and want to ski with me. I even slightly enjoy when men get over-confident thinking "well, if she can do it." Its resulted in more than a few broken bones and humbled egos.

I like that its a slight counter culture. A break from the rat race. Its cool and easy and full of slang. Sick, yo. That outfit's steezy. Did you see him throw that switch 9? Sicky, illy, powpow!

I love being outside. I love the quiet of the snow and the woods.

I love looking down the mountain and thinking creatively about my line. I love to think of the way water would flow and follow it. I love sticking my line and feeling like water. Strong and indestructible and smooth and beautiful. Its calming and exhilarating all at once. It is yin and yang. It is nearly a religion for me. A form of prayer and communing with others and with nature.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friday Quotes! The GAME

Introducing *drumroll please* Friday Quotes: The Game Apparently people play this game in their heads when they read this anyway so here's your chance to make it interactive. Guess who said each quote. You can post your answers in the comments. The person with the most correct answers gets.... the joy of being right. What? I don't paid for this blog, so you'll have to find self satisfaction wherever you can. Let the Games Begin! 1. "She's so dumb she thinks 'soy milk' is Spanish for 'I am milk'." 2. "Yeah... I didn't sit next to him on spaghetti day." 3. “Its just like when you don’t think about something, you know, and then you think about something.” 4. "What, you're my fucking mom? What, you shat me out of your womb?" 5. “I just had all of this emotion, and it burst forth from my face.” 6. “Chances are if you're reading it and you think its Heath, its probably Heath.” 7. “He drinks whiskey, or Izze, or l...

Past tense

I work with this really kickass lawyer. She's been all crazy over this guy lately. He worked for probation. Past tense. Did you see it? Over the weekend he killed himself. Enter past tense, the unwelcome jerk. And I feel soooo terrible. And guilty. Because I tried it to. I talked about it a little in this post . Try #17 and on. That's where I talk about it. A little. And now when someone kills themselves, I feel guilty. Like what I did when I was 17 somehow makes me responsible for everyone who ever does it. Like because I tried it, I should know how to fix it. But there are tons of recovering drug addicts that can't tell you how to get sober. There are great thinkers that can't explain their ideas. And the fact is, no one can explain suicide.

Wednesdays' Weirdos: Kindergarten Krazy

My friends took their 5 year old, Tempest, to look at schools in Denver. One of them went to the Waldorf Schools as a kid so they've been pretty into checking them out. I asked about the visit and these are some of the tidbits I got: - They speak really quietly, apparently its a little eerie. - They had a story telling time where they lit a candle and sat in a circle. At the end of story, they used a snuffer dealie bobber to snuff out the candle. Tempest asked how they did it and they told her "Magic..." in their whispery conspiratorial voices. - One of the teachers told the mom about how at night when she dreams she goes to an alternate plane where she meets up with the children and it is there that she finds out what the children need. Making her this week's Wednesday's Weirdo: Kindergarten Krazy. The dad did not think this was weird. The mom did. I said I'd like to think when she goes home and sleeps, she thinks of something other than work. But wh...