Saved by the Seat of my Pants

    I’ve been skiing. I wore a ski sweater I’ve had for five years and thermal underwear covered with little pink flowers. The tag inside my jacket says, “ski jacket” and my red-bibbed pants I found in a thrift store are designed specifically for the purpose of skiing. I even rented the boots, skis and poles and came down a hill. So, officially, I have been skiing. (I also have a tennis racket in the trunk of my car behind the spare tire and a fencing foil balanced in the rafters of the garage which is neither here nor there, since the subject is skiing.)

    I had this hot-shot ski instructor who, when he wasn’t skiing, was working on his MA in Phys Ed. He gave me the benefit of his expertise with his superior footwork, but had me so confused that the only lesson I learned was how to get up properly. Hopping up with both skis parallel and landing with his skis pointed in a different direction each time, this Nordic-looking ski god was so involved in demonstrating the finer points of skiing that I didn’t learn about basic plowing until two months later while thumbing through a magazine in the dentist’s office. When the lesson was over, he abandoned me without a backward glance and hopped and swished toward the next hopeful group.

    Skiing always seemed to me to be a romantic sport. I’ve dreamt of meeting a terrific man on top of a snow-capped mountain, skiing up to him in my sleek outfit, spraying him with fluffy snow and following him down the dangerous, winding path to the lodge. We would sit by the fire and sip hot-buttered rum while talking about our magical day. As it was, I discovered, the men who ski are so involved in their sport that they whiz by, with no more than a glance, racing to be the next in line for the lifts. And the novices, well they’re too busy looking down to notice anything else and then get upset when you run into them. As for the sleek outfit…the one I had was so roomy that you could invite someone in for lunch.

    I decided that the only thing I could do was become serious, but not as serious as the Nordic-looking guy, and learn to ski, so I just went for it and got in line for the lift. While waiting, I discovered that the lift doesn’t stop to let you on or off. It just keeps going and you take your chance of getting it right the first time. I did my little crab walk and positioned myself in front of the arriving chair not sure whether it would knock me down or lift me up. Suddenly, I was airborne, skis forming a perfect V which soon became the perfect X.

    My seat companion, who looked like a hot-buttered rum prospect, must have guessed somehow that I was new at this sport and gave me instructions on how to hold my skis while on the lift---mainly away from him. Just as I was beginning to relax and was actually enjoying the view, the ramp loomed ahead. I entertained the idea of riding the lift round and round until the slope closed, shouting to the questioning lift operators, “I’m sightseeing,” or if that didn’t satisfy them, “I dropped something”, but my seat mate was attractive, although not the talkative type, and there was every possibility that we would never see each other again if I were going around and around in the air above him. Besides, I thought by some chance, I might go down the slope in style and impress myself and him in the process.

    We were approaching the ramp way too fast and my lift companion shouted something to me about my skis, but I couldn’t hear him because when I am terrified, I can’t hear anything except the sound of my own pulse beating in my ears which lends an eerie Edgar Allen Poe effect to whatever is happening. Suddenly, (everything in this sport is sudden) you’re down. Suddenly, you’re up. Suddenly, you bump into someone or something.  Suddenly, someone bumps into you. Suddenly, you’re in the lift. Suddenly, you’re out of the lift. I was out of the lift and sprawled on the ground in front of the ramp.

    Trying to stand, I could imagine my instructor’s disapproval over my unprofessional attempts. As hard as I tried, I could not even get into a sitting position. I soon realized that while I had been fooling around down below with the so-called instructor, the snowy slope had turned into a solid mountain of ice and I wasn’t the princess trying to grab the golden apple. I knew then that my reward would be finding myself at the bottom of this hill without having left a bloody trail.

    Two men got off the lift and couldn’t help but fall on top of me. The lift kept moving and the skiers kept tripping and falling…over me. The scene reminded me of the cornflake commercial where the flakes tumble, slow-motion, out of a box, layer upon layer, into a bowl. I felt like the victim in some Bosch-like torture, smothering under a mass of cornflakes.  

    Just as I began repenting for all of my sins, the lift stopped (wish I had known they could do that) and the operators began clearing the stack on top of me, one by one. Someone grabbed my arm and slung me in the right direction and I was up for a moment coasting away from the ramp area desperately holding onto my poles and then I was down…again. My lift companion was nowhere in sight and most of the other skiers had started down the slope. No one looked back to see what had happened to me or my comrades. Yes, I was not the only one sprawled on top of the snow and felt an acute kinship toward the other prone figures who were holding onto their own slippery hunks of ice. 

    I was up and down, again and again. Struggling to sit up, I was able to get my skis together under me in a maneuver that is still a mystery to me, and moved the skis slowly aiming them toward the lodge at the bottom of the slope. I began gliding in a squatting position with my poles tucked under my arms and my speed accelerated. Soon I would be in the lodge. Just as I was feeling confident in my creative skiing and had convinced myself that I was lending a little dignity to my performance, I hit a mound of snow and once again sprawled in the middle of the slope…minus a ski. I found no small comfort in knowing that skis are designed to come off automatically, so you won’t twist an ankle or break a leg.   

    I lay there in snow-angel position and lifted my head only to see my escaping ski skim down the slope in great form. A skier speeding toward me, making cute little zig-zag movements, shouted “Don’t worry, I won’t hit you”. Somehow I still didn’t feel secure and covered my head with my gloved hands as he whizzed by. My face, now pressed into the icy snow, was freezing and beginning to hurt. I reached down and unfastened the contraption that held the remaining ski onto my boot, thankful that, at least, the ski equipment worked. Holding onto the ski and the poles and having lost the man and my pride, I slid the rest of the way down the slope on the seat of my shiny red-bibbed pants.

    After retrieving my run-away ski and returning my poles, skis and boots, I walked the rest of the way to the lodge. Alone, in front of the fire, I drained a mug of hot-buttered rum while trying to decide where to store my ski outfit and thought about how much I’ve always wanted to learn to ride a horse.

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