The Wind is Ripping

I’m thinking back to when I loved skiing because I’m skiing today.  When I was young I used to love to explore all the different trails, when I was good enough to do so.  I loved the trail maps and I enjoyed considering all the places you might be able to one day visit.  They all had maps that outlined their places as well.  I’m thinking back and I know I saw other trail maps but without the internet I wonder how it was I actually found them?  Perhaps it was going into my uncle’s bathroom and reading Ski Magazine.  There were probably ads. As an adult going to new places is all that I do.  That wiring may have first found a flowering n my early fascination for ski places and the maps to those places.

And, I found myself up on top of Suicide Six in South Pomfret, Vermont.  Who were the Green Mountain boys I thought as I saw one tight, rolling hill after another forming one after another hamlet?  There is something particular and snug to a Vermont scene that just isn’t replicated anywhere else.   The Berkshires, the Adirondack none of them 'feel' like Vermont. 

Looking out my knee told me it wasn’t so sure about sliding down a mountain in Frankensteinian foot ware.  I suggested my nephew and my little one should go ahead on and I shook my knee and bent down and up trying to have the knee pop and loosen itself  I took photo down at the next bluff and as I fiddled with my camera and twisted myself around and I somehow extended the stress my left knee’s had been feeling now over to my right knee.  I would need to be careful here as I regained my ski legs.  One wrong move and this would end rather badly.  Why hadn’t I bothered to stretch?  What, do I think I’m eighteen again? 

The cover is thick, if not exactly powdery.  The sun’s out and there isn’t a hint of ice, so the margins of the trail allow you to go fast and enough to test your ability to turn and stop on a dime.  Mentally I know all of what I should do but my body is reluctant to responding to the commands.  My daughter looks like she is reluctantly enjoying herself.  She holds a permeant wedge and turns conservatively.  I try and succeed to convince her to try an Intermediate and in fact, it’s a bit too tough for her. 

The second-to-last run of the day, after lunch and a beer or two my sister and I head over the crest of the mountain and head down the “Face", which has been well groomed.  It’s a steep broad plain and it’s easy to turn and forgiving when you do.  I don’t think I’ve sailed along at a speed like this in something that wasn’t motorized, in years.  Now.  My heart is rising to the challenge and the wind is ripping across my face, with a confrontational immediacy.  One turn and then another, barrel over the last crest and dive down towards my family who is waiting for me at the bottom of the run.

Saturday 02/22/19