As for the skiing, the tutoring I'd hoped to get in downhill racing never came about. So last week, at the invitation of an old friend from college, I drove north for five days of skiing in New Hampshire.
It was perfect skiing weather, temperatures rising in daylight to about 5 degrees, lots of snow, not too much wind. It was my plan to use the week to train for a race at the end of the week , and four days of preparations seemed just about right.
As you know, my passion is downhill skiing, where one embraces gravity just as you might seek the winds of some notorious point of land to test your sailing skills. In gravity, one finds god (or God, depending on your preference.)
On Monday and Tuesday, we skied in New Hampshire. My friends lack the obsessive genes that guide me, so most of our skiing was rather tame. Once in a while, I'd break out ahead of them just to let the boards know what I expected of them. That was important, because these were the new skis, ones designed precisely for high speed traveling.
My planning for this winter began last winter, when I went on a spending spree and purchased the best downhill skis in the northern hemisphere. These tools are so exotic that when I went to the local ski shop in New Jersey to have the bindings mounted on the skis, they told me I didn't qualify to use them. I signed a release stating that no matter how splintered my femur might find itself, I wouldn't sue. Thus I had a complete set of skis and bindings to take north with me.
Very quickly, I found what made these particular skis work. I was not disappointed. They have the soul of a good thoroughbred, the eagerness to point dowhill and to gather speed yet the willingness to turn when you simply wish it, to turn and to hold their speed.
Speed is a problem on a commercially developed mountain, where the business model of the developers is to draw as many customers as will squeeze onto those slopes made barren of trees and where their machines make snow, regardless of the weather. Speed endangers the masses on a ski slope the way a driver on cocaine endangers other motorists on a freeway.
I know all of this, and I am controlled by it. If you go too fast, you could kill someone. Far more important, the ski cops will kick you off the mountain. If your sin is sufficient, you could be banned for life.
So on Monday and Tuesday, whenever there was anyone else on the trail ahead of me, I backed down on the throttle, did more turning to limit my velocity.
But you can contain the passion only so long. Eventually, the pull of gravity is too great. You must yield.
On Wednesday, my friends Charlie and Mike decided we should try skiing in Maine. We drove about 50 miles east and found a mountain covered with snow that was perfect for speed -- little powder on a surface that was frozen just short of ice. The loggers had shaved the timber off of the mountain slopes and shoulders in a way that invites acceleration. The wind was stronger there, but not lethal.
In the morning, I behaved myself. Charlie and Mike skied under control. It was like being on a date with your mother. My eyes wandered.
Finally in the afternoon, Charlie declared he had had enough and went inside. Mike and I rode the lift to the top, where Mike announced that this would be his final ride. As he headed one way, I broke to the right, down a trail I didn't really know. I began to release the brakes.
I've been studying videos of World Cup racers. A good skier turns using knees and shoulders and hips, body upright and squared to the trail. That's what I was doing now as I headed down the mountain. I was not going to stop until there was no more trail in front of me.
At first, there was little traffic ahead, but then trails crossed as I got half way down the mountain, and the merging brought more skiers. I took a trail to the left, pushing the speed a bit but now all too aware of the growing congestion.
Here I have to warn that, as will become obvious in a moment, I may be reporting events with less than perfect accuracy. But here goes.
As I dropped over one ridge that traversed the trail, I saw below me perhaps 200 yards of wide slope and maybe a half dozen skiers concentrated on the left side. At the far end of my view, the next ridge crossed the trail. I headed right, hoping not only to avoid the crowd but to keep up my speed, which I would guess was somewhere above between 35 and 45 miles per hour. This is not racing speed. In this setting, a speed of between 60 and 70 could be expected in the course of a well designed race course.
In fact, I had become drawn to racing simply because it is only in such an organized event that one can ski the way I want to ski.
I probably threw a couple of gentle turns in my route down this fairway in order to limit myself, but I was in the grip of gravity. I know now that in skiing, I get as close to a religion as I'm ever likely to be. The longer one can maintain that delicate balance between falling and soaring, the more the rythm of your body's movements drifts into its own musical arrangement, the farther the experience travels from the physical to the spiritual.
Now, about three quarters of the way to the next ridge, there was a figure approaching from the left. He was skiing directly toward a large mound of snow, rounded like a scoop of ice cream, at the right edge of the ridge, next to the trees.
I was aiming for the ice cream dome.
He was aiming for it.
I had enough speed to get there first -- I thought. I pointed the skis straight for the mound, drifting to its right side, nearer the trees.
I'd never skied over the mound, didn't know what was on the other side. I hoped that the far side of the mound would fall precipitously. I had absolute confidence that as I dropped over its face, I would be able to steer left, barely avoiding the trees and bushes.
And then I was at the very top and edge of the mound and I had successfully slipped past the other skier -- that much I know. There was no collision with him, no blood on the white ice.
My next conscious observation was of the beautiful tiny piles of snow just beyond my cheeks. I could see the slender trunks of small bushes. I let my head fall down slowly and tried to make some sense of what I was seeing.
It was clear that I was lying face first in snow some place on a mountain. The next thing I noticed was that my left arm was not where it should have been. I moved my fingers and could see them out there, gripping and releasing. The fingers looked like they were in Idaho. In fact, the arm looked as though it belonged to someone else. I tried to reach it with my right hand, but that arm was pinned uphill, unable to move.
I looked back at the snow. It was very pretty, I noticed.
I'm home now. They gave me some excellent drugs in the emergency room and got the shoulder back into its socket. At first, we tried it without drugs. I yelled a bit. The two doctors didn't mind, I think. But the arm muscles wouldn't yield to their pulling.
The next races is in two weeks. I expect that both the arm and the brain -- it was a very little concussion this time, I think -- will have healed enough.