I have an assignment for everyone in Steamboat: write a ski memoir! “My arches gripped. Snow burst up in front of me. The ski’s tips surfaced, like dolphins and dived like dolphins into the clear of bright, descending alley, steep as stairs. The skies lofted, banked, and bucketed. Blocked from the wind, the snow was chiffon. It swished as high as my chest. I was tossed out by a drift and thrown…” writes Wayne Sheldrake in his ski memoir Instant Karma. Every winter storm, epic run, crazy story and adventure Sheldrake writes about I want to match with a story of my own.
I can’t think of a better thread to trace my life than my relationship to snow and I’m betting there are a few other people in Steamboat who feel the same way. My ski memoir would start in a cigarette smoke filled Chevy Malibu creeping over Loveland Pass, heading towards dad’s favorite ski area, Keystone. Then I’d describe the diesel fumed bus rides, where I snacked on PB& J’s and Twinkies with other pubescent skiers as we traveled to places like Breckenridge and Copper Mountain. I’d write about that pair of Fischers that I purchased with babysitting money. I’d flash back to a gondola ride (I believe in Vail) where something was smoked that made me nearly incapable of getting back down the mountain and the Japanese tourists that asked me take their picture while I was in this state.
I would trace the love affair I had with Winter Park/Mary Jane and that cute boy Chris Williams. My memoir show more would recall that I was moving to Silverthorne and planning on working at Copper Mountain when I realized I was pregnant with my first son. It would tell little stories like the fact that I could still pass for a child after I had my first son, which allowed me to continue skiing for something like $12.00 a day or maybe less. I would reflect on how times change and the envy I have for women now who have electric breast pumps to help relieve the pain of missing a feeding or two while they head for the snow.
Reading Instant Karma flooded me with memories of my own divine, yet complicated relationship with sliding through the snow. Snow touched me so profoundly that at one time it was as imperative that my four children experience snow the way I had; it was as important as teaching my children to read.
My ski memoir would continue into this season with a new chapter because rather unexpectedly we have a new addition to our family. I have a fifth child, a third son and I spend hours daydreaming about how to lead this child towards winter enlightenment.
I’ve been given a lot of opinions despite my experience on how to best groom a four year old for skiing. It’s consuming my thoughts, Little Toots or not, just Howelsen this year or maybe no alpine skiing at all, just Nordic. Don’t the Europeans expose children to Nordic first? I never thought this hard about exposing my other kids to the snow; such is the curse of being an older parent. I now more than ever realize the profound gift that I have the privilege of unveiling to another child. I want him to experience snow like Sheldrake describes it:
“The light was moon-faced. The chairlift rose through a hall of spruce loaded to their armpits with snow... dense clouds dipped into the trees... the mountain vibrated. The trees unswaddled cradles of snow. Sugar sacks lumped down on flour sacks which lumped down on potato sacks which lumped down on onion sacks which lumped down on cotton sacks, until like futons tumbling from the sky…”
-Wayne Sheldrake show less
I can’t think of a better thread to trace my life than my relationship to snow and I’m betting there are a few other people in Steamboat who feel the same way. My ski memoir would start in a cigarette smoke filled Chevy Malibu creeping over Loveland Pass, heading towards dad’s favorite ski area, Keystone. Then I’d describe the diesel fumed bus rides, where I snacked on PB& J’s and Twinkies with other pubescent skiers as we traveled to places like Breckenridge and Copper Mountain. I’d write about that pair of Fischers that I purchased with babysitting money. I’d flash back to a gondola ride (I believe in Vail) where something was smoked that made me nearly incapable of getting back down the mountain and the Japanese tourists that asked me take their picture while I was in this state.
I would trace the love affair I had with Winter Park/Mary Jane and that cute boy Chris Williams. My memoir show more would recall that I was moving to Silverthorne and planning on working at Copper Mountain when I realized I was pregnant with my first son. It would tell little stories like the fact that I could still pass for a child after I had my first son, which allowed me to continue skiing for something like $12.00 a day or maybe less. I would reflect on how times change and the envy I have for women now who have electric breast pumps to help relieve the pain of missing a feeding or two while they head for the snow.
Reading Instant Karma flooded me with memories of my own divine, yet complicated relationship with sliding through the snow. Snow touched me so profoundly that at one time it was as imperative that my four children experience snow the way I had; it was as important as teaching my children to read.
My ski memoir would continue into this season with a new chapter because rather unexpectedly we have a new addition to our family. I have a fifth child, a third son and I spend hours daydreaming about how to lead this child towards winter enlightenment.
I’ve been given a lot of opinions despite my experience on how to best groom a four year old for skiing. It’s consuming my thoughts, Little Toots or not, just Howelsen this year or maybe no alpine skiing at all, just Nordic. Don’t the Europeans expose children to Nordic first? I never thought this hard about exposing my other kids to the snow; such is the curse of being an older parent. I now more than ever realize the profound gift that I have the privilege of unveiling to another child. I want him to experience snow like Sheldrake describes it:
“The light was moon-faced. The chairlift rose through a hall of spruce loaded to their armpits with snow... dense clouds dipped into the trees... the mountain vibrated. The trees unswaddled cradles of snow. Sugar sacks lumped down on flour sacks which lumped down on potato sacks which lumped down on onion sacks which lumped down on cotton sacks, until like futons tumbling from the sky…”
-Wayne Sheldrake show less