I love being a skier, and by skier, I
mean any form of snow-covered-downhill-means-of-conveyance-that-requires-you–to-stand-while-in-motion
sport. I snowboard, too, went today, in
fact, so no discrimination. I’ve always
felt that skiing helps keep us young in body, mind and, most certainly, in
spirit. Sometimes, maybe I confuse
feeling young with being immortal. The
true rush of skiing is how absolutely alive it makes you feel, making the
opposite impossible to imagine. We are a
community, we snow riders, and the name of the community we share is Life. It’s simple, to ski is to live and those of
us who find ourselves addicted to the challenge and confident in our ability to
overcome those challenges live very large.
Sadly, nothing, not even the perfect experience of an absolute
all-hands-on-deck powder day can deter the Reaper forever. I am now of an age group where, as the song
lyric contends, I am past the point of dying young. It’s a startling realization. More so when it’s driven home by the untimely
death of friends.
A good friend of mine passed away
recently, not when skiing, because he no longer could, not by cataclysmic
accident or the rapid on-set of disease, but by chronic protracted illness
aided by obesity and poor lifestyle choices.
Some of those choices may have been made while we ran amuck in high
school, and perhaps my friend sped through crossroads with reckless abandon
while most of us heeded warnings to slow and turn down gentler, less
destructive paths. Maybe he was always
moving too fast to turn. My friend did
everything at full speed. We all know
these people, the true type As. They
often fail at business because they’re too damn restless to be driven. They often fail at relationships because,
like a champion rodeo bull, they’re too uncontrollable to ever be ridden. And God knows you can’t assail them with
reproach and reason. They’re just too
stubborn to listen.
Brian was a balls-to-the-wall skier,
no better way to describe his technique.
He was profoundly good, one of the very best skiers at Killington, a
certified instructor as a teenager; a hot dog, rocket fueled, top gun at the
biggest, baddest hill in the East. I was
always in awe of his talents on snow.
Huge, even at 16, his easy blend of power and grace separated him from
everyone else. He was gifted; skiing was
as effortless for him as drawing breath was for the rest of us. I remember once skiing with him and being so
embarrassed by our skill discrepancy that I spent the afternoon in the lodge
reading a book. Too bad because I could
have learned a lot if I could have kept him in sight. Even the Beast, however, ultimately wasn’t
big enough to corral him. A lifestyle
powered by party can implode any career.
The way I remember him, the way I
choose to remember, are not his withered legs, no longer strong enough to carry
him across a floor, or his struggles just to breathe through damaged lungs
under the constriction of acute obesity, the way he was at the end. I choose the beginning of the story where a
kid with a wicked grin too large to be contained, rips a zipper line through
the never-ending spring bump fields of Bear Mountain, or dips into the steep
tight trees along side Devil’s Fiddle decades before it became a free-ski rite
of passage. In my heart of hearts,
beyond intellectual certainty, I would have sworn to you then that he, my
friend and the best skier I knew, would live forever. And so would I.
We’re
a big noisy community, we snow riders, as diverse as human kind. What brings us together is the feeling that
we’re at our best, our most alive, when we ski.
I know it doesn’t make us immortal, but I think, as long as we keep
searching for another perfect run, we stay forever young. Just like Brian.
