She looked up the mountain, the hill she learned on. Remembering the rope tow, gripping tight with mittened hands, chapped cheeks from chill winds. She wore a patterned hat, pulled it down over her ears, lobes pink. Her toes and fingers instantly numb to the freezing temperatures.
***
Her grandfather took her to buy new skis when she was in high school. She had never had new equipment before, always hand-me-downs from older relatives. It felt luxurious, the shiny new blades strapped to matching boots, electric blue with neon yellow accents. She sat compact on a wooden bench in the family owned ski shop, the only acceptable place in the well-to-do suburb to buy skis. The employees fit her feet to the restrictive boots. They felt tight, compressing, oppressive. Everyone assured her the fit was right but her long toes would burn with every run for decades to come.
She never took lessons, only her father giving instruction same as when he taught her to ride a bike or tie her shoes or scramble an egg with rice and just the right amount of soy sauce. He was matter of fact, detachedly patient, waiting for her to overcome her fear. She remembers the swelling of anxiety, looking down the sloping hill, the enormity of getting to the bottom an overwhelming task welling in her chest.
***
The beginner lift slows to a crawl, allowing novices to sit their layered bottoms down onto the cushioned seat, warily grip the arm rest, avoid looking down as they are lifted skyward, skis dangling, boots weighty, gravity pulling like a string taut to the ground.
Looking down, through ski tips, there’s nothing to keep one from slipping: a wayward glove, an aberrant pole, dangling then falling, floating, to the silent impact of snow drifts below. The silence, the stillness of the buffering snow soothes while coasting upward past white coated evergreens, tiny skiers like miniature figurines expertly weaving curves this way and that far below. There’s calm in the severity of the landscape, a numbing peace inherent in the crushing steepness and chill.