Normally, I save ski stories for another readership. At the end of the day, though, this really isn’t a ski story. Furthermore, since Crested Butte is a ski resort, I am confident there is overlap; skiers read and readers ski. During winter, skiing informs my wherewithal and becomes metaphor and more. I will try to put non-skiers in the place.
At the bottom of Upper Park, over on skier’s right, there is a little steep shot—maybe 50 feet—before you reach the flats. It is really no big deal, by no means extreme or scary, a place I often ski in transit to the base area. Over the last forty years of skiing there, I have grown accustomed to bearing right, picking up speed and feeling the G-forces as I drop into the compression at the bottom. Acceleration and momentum are features of the situation.
Skiing essentially the same line all those years is habit and routine generated by liking what I’m doing. The enjoyment of skiing the same place over and over is the thrill of carrying speed into the little steep where I accelerate even more. I will probably never tire of the experience; there are many such places on Crested Butte Mountain.
Last week I came ripping through Upper Park, as conscious as possible about other skiers and where they were relative to where I was and where I was going. I consider myself a defensive skier because I wear wires in my left orbit and zygomatic arch from a skier collision back in 1971. I ski on the edges, for example, because I figure it reduces odds of getting hit. They can come at me from only one direction; maybe that’s wishful thinking.
So there I was, over on the edge, zipping down onto the flats and picking up speed, when on my left side I caught a flash of a snowboarder way too close to me. He was moving as fast as I was, perpendicular to my line of travel. My glimpse of him lasted but a fraction of a second until in a flash he was right on top of me, with obviously no idea I was there. It was too late even if he had seen me, to avoid a collision.
And collide we did. Those things happen fast, and I have no idea how it actually played out. I think he rode over my skis, which brought him down to the hard snow like a ton of bricks. I felt myself falling and rather than straining trying to stay on my skis, opted to fall on my butt and spin out onto the flats. I honestly don’t think either of us was at fault, and there was no body contact.
The snowboarder had hit hard, though, and I knew he was hurting because it took him a moment to recover. As soon as he got his wind, he hollered an oath of pain and frustration that I thought would set the tone for what I was sure would be a classic confrontation between skier and snowboarder.
Having been in post-collision pissing contests before, my first response was adrenaline-fired anger. This guy was going off, and by god I could go off too. I expected, “You old fart, why don’t you watch where you’re going,” or “Dude, what are you doing in my line?” I was trying to figure out how most quickly to get my skis off so I could meet his assault head on. But none of that happened.
Instead he looked at me lying on the snow and asked, “Dude, are you alright? Where did you come from? My bad, man, I’m sorry. My bad.”
My anger evaporated like spindrift off a hot rock. I knew the collision had been neither of our faults; he hadn’t seen me drop into the little steep place nor could I have missed him coming at me T-bone.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I answered. “How about you? Are you okay?”
Suddenly, we were just two guys enjoying our thrill who had unfortunately and unavoidably smacked into one another. No harm, no foul. His kind words—after his expletive—had defused a nasty dynamic that almost always plays out in predictable ways. “I would have killed him,” said a friend later when I told him about the incident. “I couldn’t have helped myself,” he fumed. “I would have killed him.”
One kind word—sorry—did wonders. No fighting, no yelling, no name-calling, no insults or epithets. One kind word changed the dynamic from one of interpersonal conflict to one of calm concern and consideration. We each cared that the other hadn’t been hurt. We were both contrite and admitted culpability. I was more blown away by the unexpected encounter than I was by being knocked onto the snow.
Two days later that snowboard incident jumped to the front of my brain pan when Barack Obama told NBC’s Brian Williams, “I’m here on television saying I screwed up, and that’s part of the era of responsibility. It’s not never making mistakes; it’s owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them and that’s what we intend to do.” Obama told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “I take responsibility for it and we’re going to make sure we fix it so it doesn’t happen again.”
Obama admitted his mistake in nominating Tom Daschle as health and human services secretary, Daschle owing back income taxes. “Ultimately,” continued Obama, “it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules—you know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”
How can you stay angry at someone who admits to having made a mistake, apologizes and promises to do better in the future? Obama’s display of candor and humility is perhaps the greatest contrast we have seen so far to the swaggering hubris of the previous administration. It is refreshing. It demonstrates that Barack Obama is, after all, human like the rest of us. There is precedent for that and it worked. But this isn’t really a ski story.
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