Finding the pockets

When the snow isn’t good, you get creative

In stark contrast to my first post, as I write this, a windowpane separates me from snow and frigid weather. I am in the mountains. I had been eyeing the snow report and anticipated about six inches blanketing Vail late Tuesday night. So come yesterday morning, I was ready to go early but hit pause when I looked at the temperature outside. Five degrees at the base, negatives at the top of the mountain.

The snow hasn’t been good for a while. We got nine inches on Friday night, and it blew overhead like cold smoke, but it sat atop slabs of hardened ice. I’m always surprised, however, by pockets. There are parts of the mountain that get wind-loaded, less sunshine, face a certain direction, or are sheltered from the masses. When you’ve been skiing one mountain for a while, these pockets come with years of trying a shitty run, backtracking, trying a different part of it, spotting a lone stand of trees, getting whacked by some branches and barely missing a few that fell over, and then starting all over. You assess certain days. You gauge the months. You try skiing your skis differently. Maybe a little backseat here, push the front of the boot there, try to strike the perfect balance but stay strong. All of these calculations accrue in my head run by run, day by day, season by season.

Of course, you don’t have to think. I have days where I get out on the slopes to just be a body passing quickly from one point to another. I actively try not to think. But on Tuesday morning, when there wasn’t new snow to ski, I sent my thinking down to my toes. I thought about all the little changes my ankles were making, why my quads were tired, the creaking of my boot, its connection to my skis. But I was also thinking into the space around me. I watched as skiers crossed my path. I needed to be cognizant of their speed. Could I pass them? Should I speed check and go around? Do they look like good skiers or is this their first day out? It’s an action—to think behind the thinking. To make conscious the processes of the mind that are automatic. But I have always liked this part of being an athlete.

During my pause, I watched outside as the last whirls of the storm died down. The temperature wasn’t ticking up. There seemed to be no break in the clouds, so I slid on extra layers of everything, until I felt more like a doll than a human. The cold wasn’t going to keep me.

The snow felt strange beneath my skis on the first run. It came in cold, but thick—like heavy whipping cream. In some areas, it was just enough to cover sharks and stumps. In other areas, it felt more like seven inches. It kept catching my skis, slowing me down and making moguls seem open to straight-lining. I learned my lesson that first run and got bucked before recovering control. And the pockets—those places I had miraculously found on Tuesday—were even livelier the next day. Nothing hard underneath, almost enough to slash and send a wave just past my cheek.

Tomorrow, I leave for Taos, New Mexico. I haven’t skied there since I was in high school. At that time, you still had to hike Kachina Peak. Now there’s a lift to the top. The last time I was there, it was for a big mountain competition. I can’t quite remember the details anymore, but I believe I was sitting in first place after qualifiers, going into day 2—the finals. I was excited about the line I had planned. It felt very me, very mine: two tight chutes and technical skiing, and depending on how I was feeling, an air at the bottom of the run. At the last minute, I decided to ski different skis, since there wasn’t new snow on the mountain. I had gotten halfway through my run without too many expletives, and I was nearing the top of the second chute. I was confident, maybe too confident. Almost through to the bottom, I hop-turned and the tip of my ski jammed into the side of the chute. I remember feeling confused, my ski was suddenly loose. I had popped out of my binding. I felt my stomach drop because I realized I hadn’t checked my din—that magical little dial that keeps you locked into your ski—before the competition run. It went quickly—all these thoughts in my head as my body went through the motions. Click back in. Hop turn down. Straight line out. But it still looked like a bobble to the judges. I was so furious with myself that I sped out of the chute, and aimed for the air, anger driving me forward with a lot of speed. I landed it and skied into the corral fuming.

I knew I lost first place. The sun was shining that day. It was hot. A rumor that Julia Roberts was among the crowd made everything suddenly seem glamorous. I sat with my team but then needed time alone. So I hiked up the hill and built a snowman. I thought I wasn’t in view of anyone. But right as I wound up to punch it in the face, I realized everyone was watching me. The snowman erupted.

I don’t remember where I placed in that competition. But after my anger dissipated, I realized that I had found the sweet spot—how I liked to ski.

Since that time, Taos has changed just as much as I have, but maybe not as much as the world. When I was on the chairlift yesterday, as I tried to rub life back into my stony hands, the man next to me swept his arms across the ribbons of chairlifts crisscrossing the back bowls. He said that when he first came to the valley to ski, there were no lifts out to Siberia or China bowls. It was all cat skiing, those big roving machines that crawl up the slopes to drop skiers at the top. He took clients out there once, he was a ski instructor, and told me he had to get it right the first time. There wasn’t the option to ski back down and take the lift up and try a different pitch or aspect. I nodded, thinking, exactly, exactly. But what happens when uphill capacity grows is that pockets shrink, you have to be more creative with where to find them.

With any drastic change, with any increase in volume, the pockets matter. If you have your pockets of calm, pockets of snow, of awe, of thinking and assessing, of anger even, pockets of pennies, keep them. Stuff your hands in them to keep warm. Use them when it’s time.

A lot of any given week in my life is filled with listening to music and reading (mostly fiction). I want to share/record those hours.

Listening: Just the little Twin Peaks 2020 EP “Side A” –was there ever going to be a Side B?

Reading: Still reading Balzac’s Lost Illusions, but I am laughing more. He’s so dramatic. Here are a few lines: “His clothes hung together by some miracle as mysterious as the immaculate conception.” “Put Antinous or the Apollo Belvedere himself into a water-carrier’s blouse, and now shall you recognize the godlike creature of the Greek or Roman chisel?” Also, Matty Matheson has a strange resemblance to Honoré de Balzac…