!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
Janie – Sept. 28, 1978
I really did get the letter you wrote last May, but I’ve been on an extended vacation since Christmas, which is about to end this weekend…After residency, I worked in LA for Kaiser from July thru the end of the year. April and I stayed in Venice at the beach all summer, dodging roller skates, impersonating burned-out hippies, and enjoying our last months of LA madness. Venice is a unique place – every single type of person in the world is represented there, mingling down where the cosmos meets the sand – Ocean Front Boardwalk. Heterogeneity rules in Venice, the melting pot by the sea. A great contrast to where I am now.
April left LA about a year ago to study midwifery at the U. of Utah in Salt Lake City for 2 years. I moved into as rent-free shack, comforted only by a water bed and stereo, in the backyard of a close friend’s house in Manhattan Beach. It’s really senseless to try & live in LA unless you’re by the ocean. All summer, I went to work, saved my money, & rode my bike every morning on the beach-side path, in preparation for my grand, open-ended vacation starting Dec. 31st.
We bought an 80-year old house in the oldest part of SLC, on a hill overlooking the 20 x 10 mile plain housing most of Salt Lake, ringed by mountains, crowned by the Wasatch rising 7,000’ on the eastern edge. It’s an awesome sight, and I see it all from my front porch. Convenient as it is to the city, I came to ski every day. Little Cottonwood Canyon, home to Alta and Snowbird, is like Boston to a marathoner, Broadway to a theatre-lover, Hawaii to a surfer, the Himalayas to a mountain climber. [Here he goes on an extended rhapsody about winter, powder snow, and skiing. A small sample follows]
…Skiing is like an Apache dance with gravity. I have to implicitly trust my body, that it knows much better how to ski than my conscious mind does. After all, it’s the nerves and muscles that do all the work; why not let them run the show, rather than some ephemeral evolutionary anomaly like consciousness, created by an overactive and at times unnecessary cerebral cortex? My most enjoyable moments skiing seem to come why my mind is just part of the audience.
The audience! Yes, that was my trepidation on this day at the summit of Alta. I knew, although I couldn’t see them yet, that once over the lip into the chute, I would be the single object of attention for all those coming off the Germania and Sugarloaf lifts. People standing around, idly wondering which run to take, casually adjusting buckles, gloves, and goggles, would look up and be forced to follow my every move. As my predecessor finished his run, invisible below me, I actually heard applause and whistles. In a way, I hoped it wasn’t for him, for that would mean people were warming up to the show, and I was the next one down.
At these times in skiing, it is important to clear one’s mind, to say one’s mantra, whatever it is. Some ski freaks will shout at this point, screeching like a psychedelic cowboy or crazed Swiss yodeler. I prefer to simply repeat the obvious truth that, at this point, there is only one way to go, and that is DOWN.
Storming into the head of the chute, my mind empty at last, I fight a few turns through the spray left by the previous three skiers, and then lock onto a virgin track right in the middle, heading straight down. I am dimly aware the, yes, I actually can ski this stuff, and then the exhilaration starts to build as I focus on the incredible feel of the snow beneath, no, around my feet. Not dry and fluffy Utah powder, but fresh and buoyant nonetheless; my Haute Routes sink in ankle deep, the tips riding free on the surface. Knees locked, feet together, arms pumping, hips rising and falling, I imagine that I am skiing through something incredibly dense and yet quite fluid, like mercury. My body working perfectly, my mind is totally free to feel the luscious endless depth beneath me. I am totally alone, the entire mountain deserted, completely mine.
Too soon, too soon, the Sugarloaf-to-Germania traverse appears below, signaling the end of my run. Usually, I don’t feel a burning need to look at my tracks, but in this case I know I have to. Leaning forward on my poles, I look back up. To me, the line seems perfect, completely symmetrical. If you’re gonna put on a show, I say to myself, you might as well do it right. I rest a minute, trying to freeze the feel of the snow and the sight of my tracks into my memory forever. A transcendent moment, putting me utterly at peace…
In May, I went job-hunting – Denver, Seattle, the Bay Area. The outcome: this Monday I will start working in Tacoma. I’m going to spend the next nine months there while April finishes her school here. I’ll probably be able to spend 4 to 10 days a month in Salt Lake, so we should be able to keep things going. We have to, cause we got married August 25th, outside, at the end of Little Cottonwood Canyon, past Alta.
I know, it might seem a little weird, a midwife and obstetrician getting married. Both professions derive from the same sources, and of course serve the same ends, but their means and attitudes are quite divergent. Those differences, however, are subordinated in our family to a more over-riding concern. At least half the time, one or the other of us may be called out at any moment to attend a birth.
It’s not the commonness of birth which characterizes us, it is the acceptance of disruption. A large part of our work is fundamentally unscheduled. Most unscheduled events are frowned upon: tornados, auto accidents, wars. We seem to schedules our celebrations: birthdays, graduation, marriage, Christmas, the 4th of July. But birth remains unscheduled, yet inherently joyful. We relish this ceaseless disruption of our lives…
Mike
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