Tales from the Lift Line I: The Beginning
The Beginning
Welcome to the debut of our ski blog, Tales from the Lift Line. Meet our blogger, Mary-Colleen Jenkins, who is a dedicated Northwest skier. Check in here every Thursday to follow along with her posts about skiing with her family in the Northwest. Post your own thoughts in the comments! ~ editor
“Mommy,” said my nine-year-old tolerantly, “You don’t have to be afraid of powder.”
It’s easy for her to say. Our kids were on cross-country skis at age two and started downhill lessons at four. At ages nine and 13, they’re better skiers than many adults are. They’ve skied in all kinds of weather and in every snow condition the Pacific Northwest has to offer, and they don’t remember learning any of their skills. They take their abilities for granted.
I see my skiing history as a clear stairway of experiences, bad habits unlearned, new skills continually gained. I remember my beginner years clearly, because skiing then was a rare occurrence. Now, it’s a weekly winter habit, but I’m still learning on every single run I take. When I ski at Alpental or Crystal Mountain today, I can list which runs I mastered as I progressed from beginner to intermediate to where I am now. I’m not sure what I should label my current level. “Advanced skier without a lot of style,” probably fits the bill.
I learned to ski at the ripe old age of 17 in the relatively flat state of Ohio. My best friend, Dave, who had cut his teeth in Michigan and Colorado, was determined that I would learn to ski under his expert tutelage. He schemed and planned, and then called out of the blue to announce he was coming over to my house to pick me up. Dave had something to show me; he’d found me some skis at a garage sale.
The die was cast.
I like to imagine now that hordes of other garage salers parted like the Red Sea to expose my first pair of skis, shining in a heavenly light as they leaned gently against the side of the garage waiting for me. Of course, the reality was that a cobwebby pair of outdated skis (probably circa 1979) had been thrown against the back corner of the garage. But what did I care?
They were short and white, with wide mauve, blue, and green stripes down. Straight as they come. They were rusty and ugly and they were all mine.
The closest ski hill around was Mad River Run near Mansfield, Ohio, with an elevation gain of 300 feet. By Northwest standards, 300 feet is not much, but to a rookie it was steep.
On that first day with Dave and my other friends, I experienced all the humiliations that accompany the beginning teenage skier: arms yanked out of their sockets by the rope tow, chairlift crashes, painfully slow pizza turns, falling as an alternative to actually stopping.
But what kept me going was the laughter and good-natured ribbing of my best friends and the intoxicating scent of the snow-laden air. I saw Dave and the others gliding effortlessly down the runs and I wanted to do it, too. I wanted to experience the rush they felt, the complete freedom of movement, and that undeniable gravitational pull down the hill. I also wanted the pile of lift tickets Ohio kids kept on their zipper pulls—badges of honor that said, “Yeah, I’m a skier.”
In the years that followed, my infrequent ski adventures gained altitude: Snowshoe Mountain, W. Va., with Dave and my high school friends; Canaan Valley Resort, W. Va., and 24-hour drives to Colorado, with my college boyfriend, now husband, Michael. Then the big move that promised mountains whenever we wanted them: leaving it all for the Pacific NW.
A love for skiing literally comes with a high cost. Though the mountains were finally at our back door when Michael and I arrived in Seattle, lift tickets were so expensive that we couldn’t afford to go more than a couple of times a year. When we had kids a few years later and the thought of surviving Seattle winters with toddlers loomed, we weighed the cost of cabin fever against the cost of lift tickets, and sanity-through-skiing won.
These days it’s the kids who I’m following as they glide effortlessly (and oh, so, swiftly) down steep slopes, but I share the rush they feel, the complete freedom of movement, that irresistible pull of gravity.
You know what I mean. I just know you do. This blog is all about the winter lifestyle we’ve chosen, the idea that skimming down a mountainside with boards strapped to our feet is very worth the early mornings, chapped lips, uncomfortable boots, and hanging around in lift lines.
I hope you’ll join me here on winter Thursdays as we all make our way through the Northwest winter. Skiing through it, one weekend at a time.
Winter weekends call Mary-Colleen out to the snow, but during the week she can be found warm and dry and working with words. Jenkins is a freelance editor, writing coach, and writer of two blogs, Too Fond of Books (toofondofbooks-sea.blogspot.com) and Along the Branches (www.alongthebranches.wordpress.com). You can find her on Twitter at @EmceeReads.
