When Are You Too Old To Become A Ski Bum?
"Life is difficult enough without throwing yourself off the side of a mountain." That was my uncle Gerry's opinion on skiing, and through most of my life the advice seemed sound. American friends expressed amazement that I could have grown up in Canada without learning to parallel or slalom. I answered: "Growing up in Canada, I learned to minimize my exposure to snow and frost."
My wife would sometimes nostalgically reminisce about girlhood skiing trips to Banff and the Alps. "It's lovely! You roll down these sloping hills, then stop at a chalet for gluvine and reindeer sausage." "Wine made out of glue?" "Hot wine, silly."
"Why not use the thermostat to keep warm and drink the wine cold?"
Finally, exasperated, she proceeded without me. Three winters ago, as I was spending my winter weekends toiling to finish a book, she began taking the two younger children (their big sister shared my hardline views on the snow issue) on skiing excursions in the hills around Washington, D. C. They'd all come home red-faced and happy. A little pang flared: Family memories were being formed, but dad wasn't there to share them....
Winter returned. I'd finished the book on which I had been toiling the previous year. My December calendar stretched quiet and empty. "Come with us the next time we go!" my wife urged. And I agreed.
The first day of that first ski weekend was one of the most humiliating of my adult life. I must have fallen down 20 times that day. I fell getting off the chair lift. Embarrassed, my teenage son decided he wanted to ski on his own. "If you see me, you don't know me."
In bed that night, bruised and sore, I quietly resolved: I'll master this, get down a hill without falling and then go home and never subject myself to this nonsense again.
The next morning I spent a few minutes drilling myself on form and alignment. I pushed off a beginner hill --and suddenly everything was working. I was flying down the hill. Admittedly: a very gentle hill. Even so, it was thrilling, more thrilling than a downhill bike ride, more thrilling than a fast drive on winding mountain roads. My wife met me at the bottom. "So how was that?" she asked with a smile. I answered: "As the three-yearolds say:Do it again! Faster!"
By the end of the weekend, I was testing myself on steeper hills. I was still falling (a lot), but I'd learned how to roll so the falls did not hurt so much. It was embarrassing to be a novice at age 47 and to watch the eight-year-olds surging past. But the fun-embarrassment ratio was rapidly shifting in favour of fun. We returned the following weekend. And the next. "If the Democrats win the election," I suggested to friends, "maybe we should all spend the next eight years as ski bums."
The Democrats did win of course, and the economy crashed, and very suddenly beleaguered defenders of liberty and markets had way too much work on their hands even to consider the ski-bum life. On the plus side, however, ski resorts everywhere cut their prices.
In March, we cashed in all our accumulated frequent flyer miles to fly to the spot praised by a ski expert friend as having the best snow in the United States: Alta, Utah. He'd neglected to mention that it also had about the steepest ski runs. Almost every run had a sinister warning hammered into the ground at the entry: "EXPERT SKIIERS ONLY." From my point of view, those signs are always good news: They mean that everybody else on the hill will have skill enough to keep out of my way if I make a mistake.
Swooshing through the great pillows of soft snow in the warm wind, I thought: "If there's a heaven, this is what they do there." And since life's difficulties chase after us no matter how cautiously we hide from them, what the heck-- why not throw yourself off a mountain?
Originally published in the National Post.