Downhill Skiing

            To get to the parking lot to cross-country ski at Mt. Ashland, I have to go through the parking lot for downhill skiers. I can see them on the mountain, those early-bird skiers already swooshing down the slopes, setting off a tail of snow-spray at every turn. Watching them, I sense a wisp of envy and nostalgia float through me.

            Growing up in Georgia, I knew skiing as a sport only for northerners and the wealthy. That I could ski never entered my mind until I faced my first Christmas vacation as a student at Cambridge University, in England, feeling unmoored because the man who had been my best friend there was going back to the States for Christmas. Maybe, he said, to occupy myself during the vacation, I should join the Oxford-Cambridge Ski Club's trip to Zurs, Austria: train tickets, hotel rooms, ski instructions, and ski rentals for two weeks of skiing in the Austrian Alps.

            It sounded fabulous.

            So one day I was in wet, dreary, fog-cold England, and the next I was stepping off the bus into the snow in Zurs, gazing up at the gloriously snow-covered peaks under which was tucked my Alpine hotel.

 

On the way to Zurs, on the train, someone had told a story about a man from Brazil who had come on this same trip a few years before. He, too, was a novice skier. In fact, he had never seen snow before. Not understanding that snow isn't solid, he stepped off the bus into the snow and broke his leg – even before he ever put on a pair of skis!

            Seeing one or two young people at the hotel on crutches drove home the lesson, but nothing could dampen my enthusiasm. I was ready to ski.

            The next morning I stood on the bunny slope with eight or nine other beginner skiers from Cambridge and Oxford. Our instructor was a tall, strong, athletic young man who couldn't believe his luck at being the one to teach these young people how to ski. He showed us the motions of skiing, the lean, the change of weight. He showed us how to use our poles, how to make stem christie turns, how to snowplow our skis to slow down. Keep your knees bent, he said. Don't sit back. Don't lean forward. Plant your pole. Crouch low to schuss.

            Day after day, he took us out. We graduated from the bunny slope upwards, higher and higher up the mountain.         

            Before the two weeks were over he was taking us on the highest lifts. We were manipulating our way around and over moguls, doing jump turns, carving into the snow. Once we skied over a particularly tricky spot, where a fast downhill run hit a small gully of deeper, softer snow. Watching my instructor in front of me, I said to myself, "Keep your knees bent. Keep your knees bent" and successfully skied the difficult spot and pulled to a stop next to him. He and I watched as every other skier came down the slope, one by one hitting the soft snow and toppling head first into it, as in a cartoon.

            My favorite run was the one with a gluwein hut midway down. We would pull up to the hut, leave our skis at the door, and enter the boisterous, steaming atmosphere, crowded with skiers drinking the heavy, hot, mulled wine, talking ski adventures, as heady with the cold, the exercise, and the talk as with the wine.

            One day, skiing down a particular run, I saw two skiers carrying a litter between them, skiing straight down, no turns, no slowing. They were the ski patrol, rescuing a skier with a broken leg. It looked terrifying. I knew at that moment that I would never break a leg because I didn't want to be brought down the mountain like that.

            These days the ski patrol can use snowmobiles. There were more broken legs in those days, too. Equipment has improved since the sixties.

            I stopped skiing downhill mostly because it was so expensive and also because after my son left home, I didn't have people to ski with. Then a friend took me cross-country skiing, and I was hooked again. But I do sometimes get a yearning to go downhill skiing. I'm sure I have a totally unrealistic picture in my mind of being able to ski as I used to, but when I see downhill skiers coming down the slope – those beautiful jump turns, that spray of powder, that control of speed, that graceful rhythmic motion – my body yearns to do it again. I had many wonderful days of downhill skiing after that trip with the Oxford-Cambridge Ski Club – Mt. Bachelor, Mt. Ashland, Mt. Shasta, Vermont – but nothing has ever compared to those first two weeks of skiing in the Austrian Alps.