The poetry of skiing

In the mid-1980s, I lived in Aspen and worked at a small newspaper where I shared an office with the resident dog. It’s the only paper I have worked at that had a resident dog as well as a room for repairing bicycles, waxing skis and practicing rock climbing. Aspen is a place of extraordinary beauty, and it was there, on a mountain appropriately named Buttermilk, on a gentle, velvety slope called Panda Peak, that I first attempted skiing. Most of those I shared the run with were 3 feet tall and wore ski outfits worth more than the car I was driving.

Like poetry, faith and silence, skiing -- quite unexpectedly -- awakened something inside of me. Looking back, I see it was a brief affair, as life too soon sent me on my way. But such encounters, however they might flicker over time, do not flee, and even now, I am changed. On the third and final day of lessons, my instructor, a graceful, confident man, led our group to the top of Buttermilk. It was on the chairlift that I began to realize that skiing involved more than wealth, intoxicants and Gore-Tex.

Before that moment, skiing had been mostly frustration and rejection, the feeling that I was somewhere I didn’t belong. But en route to the top of the mountain, a switch was flipped, and I witnessed beauty as I never had before. It was my first view of life from the top of a mountain in winter. When we reached the end of the lift and tumbled off, the instructor gave us time to brush ourselves off, to absorb, to look down upon valleys and feel the sunlit cold air against our faces. I felt weightless, like a piece of the sky.

Of course, there was the matter of getting back down the mountain, and as I began to snowplow, my legs locked in a death grip, I was no longer the sky. I was the mountain, a senseless boulder crashing and bouncing from the force of its own momentum and lack of any sort of control. I was cold and wet and in need of a cigarette, but through the years, with each turn, each run, as I gathered speed and control and as I stopped and turned to look back up the mountain, something inside me was born. Over time, I never felt as free.

Even though I was never very good at skiing, I did it every chance I could, with friends or alone, especially alone.

There were wonderful moments, warm, sunny days when snow-frosted trees turned to crystal, as well as gray powder days when the world turned slow and quiet and soft.

Skiing became my remedy, my solitude. When faced with problems, difficult decisions, feelings of helplessness, when I couldn’t pay the bills or make sense of life, I turned to the mountain for answers and hope. It’s easier to have hope in the mountains.

I remember riding a chairlift through a narrow canyon of trees on West Buttermilk one afternoon in 1987. Last run of the day. No one else was on the lift. Snow fell hard, and the world was beautiful and kind. I thought to myself, “What in life could ever be more important than this?” Two years later, I was living in Detroit.

It turned out some of my initial instincts were right. As much as I loved skiing, I did not belong in Aspen. I belonged in Detroit, then St. Paul, then Los Angeles. I now live near a small town called Crestline, in the San Bernardino Mountains less than an hour from Big Bear. I haven’t skied for almost five years, and I’m not sure why.

I remember a bit of philosophy, the kind sold on the back of T-shirts. “If you don’t still ski,” it declared, “then you never really did.” I wonder about that now. What happened?

In Detroit, I discovered a new kind of beauty, the kind hidden among ruins of burned-down homes, around fire barrels on vacant lots, in the eyes of children who face great odds. It’s the beauty of kindness and hope and faith where it is most needed, a warm flame on a cold night.

IT snowed awhile back in Crestline, came down hard all night and left 10 inches by morning. I was out early shoveling snow when I stopped to catch my breath. I looked up into the sky, into the tops of trees, and I was reminded of Buttermilk. I looked over at my daughter Rhuby, who turns 5 in February. The last time I skied was a month or so before she was born. She was sliding on her stomach down a pile of snow in our driveway and shrieking with joy.

Perhaps it’s time she saw life from the top of a mountain and was introduced to the poetry and silence and faith of winter. And, perhaps, it’s time I went too.

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For information on local ski spots: www.skisocal.org.