The ski season had weeks ago ended, but the five-hundred-foot hill in town still held ample snow. It had been the winter of the ages; all season, the townsfolk had been reaping the bountiful harvest of powder. Plow drivers were run ragged while snow riders were overjoyed – some bragged a little too much coming into their desk job day-after-day at ten, while those with night shifts burned the candle at both ends. What a season to be a waiter. By April, many a vitamin-D deficient soul proclaimed with sunken eyes and strong quads that enough was enough, just give me a day with sun, dammit. And on this spring day, the sun was surely out in all its glory.
I didn't quite get to enjoy the winter like I would have in the past. Being the father of a wily and beautiful one-year-old, I had new-found responsibilities that took me from almost all things skiing. Gone were ten-thousand turn Saturdays followed by heavy après happy hour(s). Skinning for powder in the mornings with my mates then skiing all afternoon with my wife had been my reality only recently yet felt like it had happened to somebody else; had taken place far away, perhaps on another world. The only way I could get my turns in with any regularity now was via 5:30am tours - a time to myself carved out from hours I would otherwise be getting my sixth and seventh hours of sleep.
At first it seemed my morning skiing would have a fairly normal cadence - maybe I would go a few times a week. But the snow came early. And then it came often. And it didn't hurt that my friend Brendan joined nearly every day. A journey undertaken with a trusty partner had become something rare - my phone now seldom rang since my child emerged into the world. I appreciated Brendan's presence greatly and our friendship grew all the more.
So we toured on crisp, dark mornings, some with more stars than I had seen even in a planetarium. But more often than not - after snowblowing two feet of snow off my driveway at 4:00am so I could escape my snowbound home - we toured under skies choked with falling snow. We headlamp skied our one, steep run in powder almost daily; faceshots came and went with each turn as the town below slowly emerged out of the dark clouds like a cosmic dream.
The snow was relentless. Eventually we tired of the routine - we even fooled ourselves into believing we didn't want to go anymore. But then it would snow again. And I would clear the driveway. And we would find ourselves once again two thousand feet above town before sunrise, skiing the lightest and deepest of snow. Eighty times Brendan and I made that journey over the course of the winter, each time a slightly different revelation. Each time made possible by the camaraderie built on sacrificing a little bit of sleep for a lot of snow.
But now the season was over, and the sun was back. My morning routine with Brendan was now replaced with a new pattern, this time taking place solo during lunch breaks at the little ski area right in town, a lucky five-minute walk from work. I would put on my two-buckle plastic boots, shoulder my lightest of camber-and-a-half, three-pin mounted, fishscale XCD skis, and scurry over to the closed little mountain.
Forgoing skins, helmet, and shirt, I would switchback up the small but steep hill under the gift of spring sunshine. Reaching the top always proved a little sporty and challenging. Instead of determinedly pointing my skis straight up the hill I was nudged toward finding the most efficient way up. Though I often resorted to sidestepping to mitigate slipping, the ascent was a conversation with the terrain instead of an absent-minded, time-trial conquering of it. Once atop the mountain, the time usually spent transitioning was replaced with slowly breathing in the view of town, now bright, warm, close.
With no transition to downhill mode the choice to descend came almost cosmically – like something esoteric to our understanding gently compelled me to move. A slow, straight, sliding start on the soft corn was quickly punctuated by the need to control the unwieldy skinny skis. The elastic snow and steepness required jump turns, and the cableless three-pin bindings gave little resistance. In each lead change, slightly aloft, there was a long moment of weightlessness before the skis came back to earth and the sole of the boot engaged into the turn; a time when no force was acting upon me except for gravity – lonesome and free.
Our world of downhill skiing holds so many delights – many of them unknowable until fate thrusts us towards them – a ski in the pitch black of morning save for the crescent moon is not often our calling, nor is a Nordic reimagining of downhill skiing’s expectations during lunch breaks from work. The mosaic of these experiences mirrors that of life, where the sweetest joys are often those found serendipitously while we improvise. Much like the wild joy of being a father; like the stunning luck those of us who get to ski have somehow found. Everybody should be so lucky.
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