Monday, December 28, 2009

Gravity Works: If you don't ski opening day...


“How was opening day?” asked my friend.

“It was good,” I answered.

It was the best of times. Opening day at the ski area might not be the best ski day of the season, but any time spent skiing is better than time spent doing most anything else. After a month of anticipation, I was psyched to drag my lazy butt off the couch and out from in front of the computer. I wanted to see if it still fit onto a chair lift. Think festive.

Anticipation is probably at least half the thrill. Usually I start dreaming about skiing in late August, for sure by September. By mid-October, enthusiasts gather in front of the post office to talk snow and skis; by November the psych builds as temperatures fall.

Pre-season November is always difficult for me because it’s often too cold for me to bother my horses or hike the mountains. I get all antsy for lack of exercise, which is why more enthusiastic souls submit to pre-season physical training. I have always eschewed such routine not for doubting its value, but simply because I’m lazy. Hence, couch and computer.

The computer provides pre-season conditioning, reading about new equipment, surfing ski areas and summoning snow and weather reports from resorts where it hasn’t even snowed yet. I look at pictures of previous season powder and imagine coming season thrills. Oh yeah: the psych builds.

Pre-season conditioning also involves checking my gear, perhaps augmenting my quiver with a new and mostly un-needed pair of skis, and making sure my pockets have all the right stuff in them. I make sure warm clothes replace last spring’s lighter-weight gear in my locker. Inevitably, and no matter how many times I complete this drill, I always forget something. This year was no exception.

I had no intention of making it up on the hill in time to catch anything like the first chair. I mean, get real: About the only thing that can stir me out from between the sheets that early is a foot of fresh. No fresh on opening day; instead—typically—the day dawned bright and bluebird sunny.

I was rested and ready to ski. Now temporal awareness would shift to a metric of fifteen minute intervals between bus pickups. Acceleration and momentum would define rips down the strip. Gravity would circumscribe experience and focus compelling force into frictionless advance. Physics rules.

Actually, all that evocative prose is a remembrance of seasons past. Opening day is never like that. Instead, skiing is zooming down a strip of man-made snow in a mere fraction of the time it takes to ride a chairlift to the top of it. Most of the fun is had standing in the lift line talking about skiing, people watching, and appraising ski fashions and those wearing them.

Skeptics scoff at early season skiing because there aren’t enough ski runs open, because what is open is too gentle-gradient to make turns, because they don’t like man-made snow, because the lift lines are too long or because the lifts run too slowly. I know one skier who simply won’t use Teocalli Lift because it is slow and old.

Other people simply have a difficult time making the transition between summer activity and winter thrills. It is a physical and psychological leap to stop playing golf, hiking and fishing, and gear up to freeze your ass off on a chairlift.
Skiing every chance I get is important, though, if for no other reason than what I call “hardening.” Hardening is what trees do as temperatures fall, drawing their sap and whatever vital juices into their core and roots. They harden themselves to the cold.

I harden myself by submitting to cold wind in my face, freezing on chairlifts and trying to warm my hands and feet against the cold. This may not be too important now while temperatures are still relatively warm, but the discipline will stand me in good stead when December and January temperatGravity Works:ures try to kill me. I’ll be able to take it; I will be hardened to it. I am ready for it.

Now I spend time every day watching long-range weather forecasts and praying for snow. Snow gods are getting used to my entreaties that the El Nuño doughnut hole will go bother someone else. All the signs are there; ski season has begun.

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