Why I Love To Ski

It was my dad who taught me to love being outside. Hiking, canoeing, weenie roast campfires, even just a simple stroll in the woods — Dad showed me that life was better lived outdoors. A good dose of Mother Nature could soothe nearly any weary mind.

Of course to my father, the Great Outdoors meant piling everyone into the family station wagon on summer weekends and driving up to a ramshackle cabin in upstate Pennsylvania. Oh, that cabin. There was no indoor plumbing; spiders lurked in the eaves. My sister saw a huge rattlesnake once at the spring from which we had to draw fresh drinking water. The smell of that two-seater outhouse is still fresh in my mind, 38 years later.

Hey, I may be a huge complainer; my dad and sister loved the place. Mom usually politely declined to go.

But on the drive up, we would pass signs for Pennsylvania ski mountains. Jack Frost. Shawnee. Blue. I could sometimes see the jagged slopes cut into hillsides far away. Skiing. It looked so cool. And elusive. Skiing looked like something only rich people did. Sophisticated types, the kind who wear black turtlenecks. With my dad telling fart jokes, blasting the Beach Boys and me bickering with my sister on the eight-hour car ride, that was not my family.

Flash forward to my junior year of high school. An intrepid science teacher organized, for the first time in the school's history, a weekend ski trip to Vermont. Anyone who wanted to go could sign up. It was also remarkably affordable: Students paid $100 for a two-night hotel stay and that covered our lift tickets as well.

"Let's do it," said my best friend at the time, Karuna Jobanputra, her eyes shining with excitement. "Let's learn how to ski."

The daughter of immigrants from Calcutta (I don't think there are ski mountains there?), skiing was equally as foreign to Karuna as it was to me. But that's the great thing about life, and life in America: You can go as far as you push yourself. You can accomplish things beyond your ancestors' wildest dreams.

And so, huddled in the back of a charter bus as we sped north from New Jersey flatlands, Karuna and I plotted how we would take a beginner lesson. A third friend, Joy, went off on her own, determined to teach herself how to snowboard. Nobody was surprised when she came back to the Holiday Inn that evening with a big gash on her upper lip.

"Snowboarding's really hard," was all she would say.

That lesson was one of the best things I've ever done in life. Thanks to a very patient Stowe Mountain instructor, I never developed any fear of skiing. We went down the bunny hill dozens of times that day. Karuna and I fell, we toppled over sideways. In my memory, the snow was baby soft, like sweet powder.

She and I laughed endlessly at each other. We warmed up with hot cocoa in the lodge, elated at what we'd just done. Even riding up the chairlift was a thrill. By the second day of the weekend, we'd even worked up the courage to go down a few green trails. Standing at the top of the mountain, I'd never felt more confident in my life. I'd done it. I'd achieved a childhood dream: I was a skier.

I guess I like being outside so much that it was even a factor on where I went to college (Groovy UV/University of Vermont) and I often went skiing on the weekends with friends, mostly in my senior year. As poor college kids, we didn't have much money, so we chose the cheapest ski resorts in the area: No fancy name-dropping Stowe or Killington for us. Instead it was Bolton right by the UVM campus. Jay's Peak on the Canadian border — brrr, is that a cold mountain!

Then I moved to New York City, got settled in my journalism career and embraced city life, plus grad school. Replaced by cocktail bars and cappuccinos, those outdoor weekends became a thing of the past. I met a man, a fellow journalist, and fell in love. Oddly enough, he had bad knees, just like my dad. My skiing days were over.

Fast forward again to my mid thirties. That man and I had divorced. We had a beautiful toddler son who we split custody of, and I had moved out of our home. It was the dead of January and a long, grey winter weekend loomed ahead of me.

I was broke. My son was with his father. My marriage had failed. It was 20 degrees outside and my attic apartment was cold and drafty, so much so that I had to sleep in a winter hat and gloves. For the first time in my life, I was utterly, utterly alone.

I remember thinking I had two choices: Flop on my bed and cry my eyes out — This wasn't how my life was supposed to turn out! Or. Wait a second. There was something else I could do.

After all, I spent four years in Vermont. I knew how to get through a long winter.

I took myself back to a ski mountain, again the cheapest one I could find. I was rusty for sure — 10 years off the skids will do that to you. Gone was the college swagger of racing friends down the slopes. I was just as timid as I had been as a 16-year-old girl. But I was delighted to find it slowly came back to me.

It's still coming back to me. But I was, once again, a skier. As I navigated my way down icy mountains on knees that were now a decade older, I realized I needed to be in control of my life. My life was not in control of me. After all, it's hard to feel sorry for yourself when your mind has to focus on keeping warm, staying upright and not breaking a leg.

If I could do that ^, then I could move forward after something as axis-tilting and deeply painful as divorce. I could find the truly perfect man for me, and I could try to be the best parent and role model to my son that I knew how.

The mountains continue to call me; I go up on as many winter weekends as I can, oftentimes just by myself. I've taken my son, 4, for ski lessons and I'm determined to make him love the sport as much as I do. But I also don't want to be pushy. If it's not his thing, that's OK. I know too many people who've had bad experiences on ski hills and will never return again.

To this day, I often say I had a choice: "Bawl my eyes out. Or just go skiing." Just like my dad had predicted, being outside was a balm for the soul.

Life is a lot like any good ski mountain: It will shake you, flip you and toss you on your butt in the freezing cold. Sometimes those falls are damn scary. And the mountain? It could care less you're in pain. It's just there, silent and towering, the way it's been for thousands of years before you showed up. It will remain that way once you leave. It won't help, so don't ask. It only offers the temptation to keep trying.

Get up. Assess the damage. Learn what made you topple. How can you avoid making the same mistake on the next run? Go down again.

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