Buck Prairie Ski

         My friend Jim, who is in Costa Rica this month, writes me – as though I would be envious – that it is hot there.

         I am emphatically not envious. In fact, I feel sorry for Jim. Winter means relief from summer heat, and there he is, steaming in the tropics. Besides, he’s missing the skiing.

         Last week-end I skied with some friends the nine miles from Buck Prairie to Hyatt Lake. I was wearing my new snow suit my son had given me.

We were skiing in spanking new snow, snow so new it was still being born as we skied, tiny, fragile, newborn flakes giving us baby kisses on the nose. We skied through open evergreen forests with big trees dangling frozen lichens on the lower limbs and sloping with the weight of snow on their upper extremities. We passed a giant cedar with a massive trunk, looking rough and scrabbled against the slick snow. Near the top of the mountain, the white hill rose to meet the cloud-blackened sky with dramatic impact. When it was time for lunch, we stamped out flat spots in the snow at the bottom of a short, steep run and sat on our skis to eat our sandwiches. Those of us who got there first watched the other skiers come down the hill one by one, either upright and graceful or barely still upright or sliding as though into home plate. Whatever the arrival, everyone sat down to lunch with a big grin. No one was thinking about Costa Rica.

         The last couple of miles took us down a long hill that got steeper and steeper and faster and faster and tangled a lot of skis, bringing down skier after skier in great fluffy clouds of snow. After that we had a short ski on flat ground that ended at a little restaurant on Hyatt Lake. It felt very European to arrive at a restaurant on skis, to leave our skis stuck in the snow outside the door and sit crowded in the back room, steaming in the heat, devouring bowls of homemade turkey noodle soup and downing mugs of beer or coffee.

         In the car on the way back, Tom remarked how good he felt after skiing. Better than after a hike, he said. Mike suggested it was because cross-country skiing is such good aerobic exercise. Tom thought maybe it was the cold and the fresh air. I’m not sure, either, why we felt so good, but I could see it in our ruddy cheeks and sparkling eyes and in the endless talk at the restaurant about equipment, places to ski, our once-upon-a-time ski stories and where we would ski next – Billie Creek, Hemlock Shelter, Lake of the Woods to Fish Lake, Crater Lake. It looks like a lot of good skiing ahead.

         For the life of me I can’t see why people want to go south for the winter. Rain? Mud? Cold? Overcast skies day after day? Let them be. There will be plenty of hot days later on, and in the meantime, there is the snow.