Nor do I have any desire to. Jen on the Edge took my “Get Ree Out of the Writing Slump of Winter” challenge by throwing the year 1987 into the hat ring. At first, I was really confused – 1987? What the hell was I doing? Then, I remembered.

In 1987, I was married to Practice – an avid ski bum. We’d bought our first house, making us semi-adultish. I was working in Human Resources, hating my boss (who told me, in my annual evaluation that I was abrupt, abusive and abrasive – and while I’ll give her her alliteration props…she was the last female boss I ever had and I’ve taken great pains to NOT emulate her), and thinking about babies.

One day, Practice came home from work with a great plan. We’d go skiing! In Montana! And Wyoming! And … Idaho!!! Oh yea. We had a friend, Bob, who had grown up in the west and he knew all of the primo spots to break bones ski. The plan to see exactly how much torture the Hotfessional could stand was hatched.

Being in West-by-gawd-Virginia meant that there was no direct route – so we flew to Cleveland and Salt Lake City on the way to Bozeman. This was not a problem for me…but being married to a man who absolutely hated flying and got airsick with alarming frequency challenged even my patience.

When we arrived (finally) in Big Sky country, I made a pact with our host’s Mom. If the temperature dropped below 20, I was staying with her – snuggly in their big ranch home, venturing out only to shop. I didn’t understand the attraction of strapping really thin boards on my feet, bundling up in 17 layers of wool products and face-planting on mountains that were better seen while sipping hot toddies in front of a roaring fireplace. The only wool I was interested in had been knitted into sweaters and afghans.

Of course, as luck would have it, it was one of the warmest Marches on record – at least according to the locals – with the temperatures hovering around 32 and brilliant blue skies.

The first day we skied in Montana was lovely. The trails were nice and wide – well groomed and fairly empty. Big Sky Resort wasn’t a huge tourist attraction, so I was able to take my time and enjoy life at 10,000 ft. I would have been perfectly happy not moving the rest of the week. Alas – it wasn’t up to me.

Next stop – Jackson Hole – brought all new terrain. Can I just share a quote from The New York Times?

Jackson Hole is a standard-bearer among United States resorts, and its multiple bowls, rock-strewn chutes and plummeting glades, as well as a liberal out-of-bounds policy, are why so many pro skiers and snowboarders call Jackson home. In some cases, orange, lollipop-like warning signs are all that stand between you and a potentially bone-jarring cliff drop.

Bone-jarring cliff drop, they say! More like piss-in-your-ski-pants inducing runs, I say.

Jackson has these things called “bowls”. Picture your average cereal bowl lined with snow. Now, picture it in a ginormihorrific size. NOW picture it nearly 2 miles above sea level and a mile deep.

Picture yourself standing on the edge.

Got it?

Now. Picture.yourself.throwing.yourself.off.

Voluntarily.

Are you screaming yet?

I was. And I kept screaming until I crashed and burned, about midway down.

My right ski was buried from the back end up to my boot binding. And sticking straight up into the air. With my foot still attached. My left ski was somehow underneath my ass. I was laying ON MY BACK, staring straight up into the sky. A brilliantly blue sky, but still. My head was downhill. I had one ski pole still attached to my wrist by its strap – but the other was about 30 feet away when I found it. Unfortunately, it had not STOPPPED and was still making its way to the bottom of the bowl.

As I lay there, contemplating divorce my predicament, a man appeared at my side. “Do you need any help?” he asked. I told him I thought I could manage and reached up to unfasten my boot from the slat of death ski that was vertical. (Thank goodness I still had some abs – that was the hardest sit-up I’d ever done.) He nodded, smiled, and whisked off down the mountain – graceful and smooth – just like on television.

Did I mention that he was about 80 years old?

No way was I asking a founding AARP member to help me – a 23-year-old attempting to pretend I could actually ski – dig myself out. What if he’d broken a hip? How would I have lived with myself?

After that spectacular performance, I hobbled the rest of the way to the bottom and made directly for the lodge. When the rest of the crew finally found me and convinced me to join them out on the slopes again, I tried to make them promise to not venture any further than 300 yards from the nearest ski patrol/red cross/paramedic outpost. They refused – but promised me beers on the porch at one of the cabins situated nicely half-way between the top of the trail and the bottom.

I blame them, to this day, for the “beers for the knees” mantra I chant every time I exert myself.

Our last stop on the journey was Grand Targhee, Idaho – home of potatoes and Sarah Palin. Of course, Idaho was also the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway, so there is that. It was more like skiing in Montana and I would have been happy enough there were it not for the guy that stopped me at the bottom of the lift and said, very sweetly, “You have mud all over the bottom of your face.” After I finished brushing at my chin and wondering where the holy hell I could have gotten MUD on my face in a place where the snow was 500 inches deep, I realized that it wasn’t mud.

It was my tan.

After skiing for five days in the “brilliantly blue” sky while wearing a ski cap and goggles, I had a perfect tan. From the bridge of my nose all the way to my chin. Obviously it looked like dirt because no one tans like an Arab girl when exposed to a week of sun – even if it was the only three inches of my body that wasn’t covered the whole time.

I did go skiing a few more times between those days and when I finally hung up my Dynastars for good – but never at any elevation above 4000 feet and never, ever west of the Mississippi. Shortman is a snowboarder, and I watch him and think that it would be fun to try again, especially with my son. Then I remember that I’m not 23 any longer, and bones break easier, and there’s a reason that my mother’s nickname for me is “Grace”.

—- This post is in no way intended to insult skiers, octagenarians, founding AARP members, or Idahoans. —-

Trackback URI | Comments RSS