A Great Leap Forward, Part I

February was a Great Leap Forward for me, which I’m still assimilating.

I’ve learned during my recovery that almost anytime I think about or get ready to try anything I used to do, I generate a suspiciously large dose of anxiety. The closer the activity is to the core of my self-image, the higher the load of anxiety. I’ve gotten used to this now, and am no longer worried about the anxiety. I still go through it, but it no longer freaks me out.

The first two weeks of February, I was back in Snowmass, Colorado, were I’ve been skiing almost every year since 1968. My family has had a house there all this time, and it’s as much home to me as anywhere. especially the ski mountain, which is one of my absolute favorite locations on earth.

Because it’s so familiar, I’ve always felt free to cut loose on the slopes there, knowing where I’m going, the best places to stop, where the choke points are, how to navigate among the lifts. I’ve got an organic mental map which doesn’t need much thought, and so I can devote most of my energy and awareness to the sheer joy of movement and the task of looking elegant.

But fear of re-injury had me thinking I would need to ease up, go slower, be less aggressive, stay away from trees, and powder, and bumps. I even bought a special helmet to protect my jaw as well as my head. Having my son and daughter there full time, and thus getting really good, better than me actually, after I had taught them everything they know about skiing and snowboarding, had been their touchstone for perfection on the slopes, also gave me worries, increased my level of performance anxiety.

But in the two weeks I was there, first with some epic classic powder days, and ending with some warm, sunny corduroy groomer high speed runs from top to bottom, took me from weak and tentative, wheezing and panting for breath, to confident, smooth, assured, fast and stable, feeling just as I always had. Score one for persistence and conviction.

Two things helped. First, the weather gods had the good grace to dump a couple of feet of snow in the first week. Day after day of fresh powder does wonders for someone afraid of a bit of jarring from icy corrugated moguls. “Old man snow” is what I call it, damping the bumps and making the turns easier, once you know how to work within it, rather than letting it work you.

And, second, I had two of my kids there, who’d been skiing together for weeks, getting better and better and ready to make me proud. I had each of them, Annie and Cody, on snow before their first birthdays. While I didn’t actually “teach” them how to ski (or, in Annie’s case, snowboard), I did show them how to have fun, what it means to let gravity do the work, and what “point yourself downhill” really means.

Sliding on snow is an art as much as a sport. It’s painting your portrait on an ever-changing topography, with the snow never the same from run to run, or day to day. Looking good, appearing graceful, while challenging harder and harder tracks, is really the essence of the sport. Talking about that with them for decades, having them follow me through the trees time after time, being an example for function following form that’s what I gave them.

And it warmed me to tears this year, seeing them reach and surpass my skill. Not because they got the technical stuff right, but because they had learned to internalize the process and to act before thinking, to understand that how you feel and look is how you judge your quality on the hill.

I literally had to keep up with them. I learned what had driven them all those years, trying to follow me, to impress me. Now, I had to be the pupil to my children, and there may be no more powerful motivator than wanting to look good for your kids.

(To be Cont’d)