Skiing

An Essay on the Early Days

Ever since I was probably six or seven years old, every year I looked forward to those wintery flakes of glory to come shimmering down from the heavens.  The day my step-father took the rest of my family to Colorado to learn to ski was the birth of my most passionate childhood hobby.  My mother and I learned to ski at Sunlight, a small resort outside of Glenwood Springs, Co.  It took only the better half of one day before I was racing all around.  I tried to get to the bottom of the hill as fast as I could so I could take the tow rope to the top and do it all over again.

For the next ten years I would ski as often as I could, though that usually only came to be one or two weekends a year.  My family began to take a yearly trip to a resort in the northern Michigan called Shanty Creek/Schuss Moutain.  It was there that I slowly increased my skill, despite my extensive attempts to have my parents buy me newer, longer skis.  I skied on my first pair of skis until I was about 14.  They were only about 2/3 my height.  Finally, my parents bought me some longer, chipped and faded K2's.  The edges of the old, garbage skis were so rusty and deteriorated that no ski shop would work on them.  "To sharpen these skis would be to destroy them even more," one man said.  In the second season of their use, I lost edge on a mogul run and split my knee cap.  My mother, who is an RN (among other things), looked at it and shrugged it off.

It wasn't two weeks after my accident that my family had been planning a trip to Colorado; heaven in my eyes.  Limping, the K2's were checked in as baggage and I boarded the plane to Denver International with my sister and parents.  Nearly 10 years to the date, I returned to my place of birth (into skiing) and skied Sunlight again.  We were there for a whole week and I skied every day for ten hours or more.  I skied Keystone, Copper, Sunlight, Aspen Highlands, and Snowmass, all of them as wondrous as ever.  My knee felt terrible, but I felt great.  I had never had so much fun in my life.  It wasn't long after the bright and warm rays of the spring sun appeared that I would return to my lust for mountains and snow.

During the summer before my senior year in high school, I was fortunate enough to embark on another vacation, this time to Europe.  My family and I visited several countries, not the least of which was Austria. While there, I ran across a package whereby I could ski Stubai Glacier, including transportion to the mountain and ski rental, for a mere $52 American currency.  The Alps are much grander than the Rockies back home.  I'll not likely forget the experience.

Nearly a year later, and a new pair of skis in hand (my wonderful girlfriend bought them for me), I returned with my family, on the last of our family vacations, to Winter Park Colorado.  Once again, every day for the whole week, I skied as much as possible.  And much better, I might add, now that I had some decent skis.  It took some getting used to, skiing powdered steeps with 198 skis, but I cherished it more than ever.

Now, the frosty air fills my nose and I breathe it with reverence and recollection.  As those glimmering shards of ice fall from the sky, my knee locks up in agony, but I will endure again and again.

When I was in high school, I had an AP English teach who was something of a jerk and who rarely had anything beneficial to say. However, one day he did say something wise:  "There are only two truly wonderful feelings a man can feel.  And the second is skiing powder."