I can't for the life of me remember what temporary insanity induced me to get on a pair of downhill skis for the first time. It was sixteen years ago. I must have been bored. I was in college, working an internship in Kentucky of all places, and some of the other interns and I went to General Butler State Park, which at the time had a ski hill with a whole 600-foot vertical drop and three or four lifts. (It closed permanently a couple of years later.)
I don't remember learning to ski there. I don't remember learning how to get on and off the lifts. I certainly didn't have a lesson. Maybe one of the other interns gave me a few pointers. At any rate, by the end of that first trip, I was managing to make it down the hill on the rental skis. That's all I remember.
Mark skied for the first time sometime after I did -- he went with his brother somewhere. Later the two of us went to an eastern resort and took a couple of lessons. Over the next few years both of us improved, him much faster than me due to a general willingness to hurl himself over precipices, one that I have never shared. But I did get to the point where I could make it down most any intermediate run without panicking. He goes skiing about six times as often as I do, but we still take family trips every once in a while, and occasionally trot out to the local hill (yes, we do have them in Minnesota) so the kids and I can practice a bit.
We just got back from a trip to Colorado, the first trip since I started exercising and lost all that weight. I think I learned something.
Even though I've been skiing for sixteen years, and even though I have been able to ski intermediate runs for a long time, and even though I'm fitter and stronger than any other time I've ever been skiing, I spent all my snow time this trip on easy "green" runs. It is about time I took a step back. For a long time I have been trying to ski stuff that is really too hard for me. Sure, I can "make it down," the intermediate runs don't frighten me, but my form is terrible and always has been. Maybe I was trying too hard to keep up with my daredevil husband so that we could sort of ski together once in a while.
At any rate, maybe because of what I've learned from swimming and running over the past two years, I realized that what I really need to do is stop trying to pretend that I'm a good enough skier to ski intermediate runs. Merely being unafraid of them is not enough for me. So, I took a refresher lesson on my first day, and then I spent the rest of my snow time working doggedly on the fundamentals of carving turns, on easy terrain: back and forth across the cruiser hill, not even attempting pole plants, doing nothing but concentrating on the pressure of the edges in the snow.
It sounds maybe kind of boring? Actually, the time went by very fast. The truth is I like the challenge now, of trying to learn how to do something physical, how to improve. Maybe if I was already a good skier, I would be having fun just, er, having fun, going fast and feeling the wind and challenging myself on tricky terrain. But as I am -- reasonably confident but aware of how much work I have to do -- going back to the easy terrain and struggling to carve turns gracefully and efficiently, turn after turn, occupied all my attention and challenged me from head to toe. By the end of my few hours on the slope each day, when I went back to fetch the baby, I was sure I was just on the cusp of "getting it." And of course on the last day when I popped off the rental skis for the last time, I thought: Darn it, I almost had it.
Given how rarely I get to get on skis, I honestly don't know when I will ever make it back off the easy green cruisers. Maybe after a while, I'll be longing for the days when I thought I was improving just because I was tackling harder terrain. But I'm determined to fix my bad form, and if that means sticking to the easy stuff for a while, so be it. Baby steps!
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