The view from the top of Sugarbush Mt. on race day, Feb. 5, was spectacular. Standing in the starting gate, I could see two downhill gates straight ahead before the trail dropped out of sight. Above, the sky was its buest hue and the landscape as far as you could see was a patchwork of white farmland and gray forests.
I had skied the day before in Massachusetts to see whether I was sufficiently impaired by my January injury to back out of the downhill race. I took my first ride up the chairlift and fell within 150 yards of getting off. I fell on my right side, so no harm was done to my damaged left arm. I recognized right away that the only reason I had fallen was because I was skiing too slowy, too timidly. My mind wasn't focused on the activity at hand.
So I skied the rest of the day at speed, and everything went well. The trail I was using -- a decent single black diamond -- often was mine alone, so I could open up a bit. I felt in control most of the time. At two o'clock in the afternoon, I recognized I was getting sloppy and I quit for the day.
Monica rode with me to Vermont early the next morning. I was in time to make a few inspection runs along the trails that have the downhill course.
It seemed to me that the course had been set more open than in the previous two years, and my reaction was surprising. I had spent the last 12 months visualizing the course as I knew it. When I now suspected it would be faster, I was frightened.
There was a practice run, and when I got in the starting gate, trying to focus on carving my turns with my shins jamming into the boot fronts and my weight on the downhill ski, I vowed to go all out. I don't know what my time was for that run, but when it was over, I knew I hadn't skied well at all. In fact, I hadn't remembered to do any of the things I'd spent the last year visualizing.
But the fear was removed in that run, I thought, and when I got in the starting gate for the actual race, I was fairly relaxed.
The race takes you south along a trail that straddles the top of a ridge. There are about seven or eight gates that lead you to the right, left, right, left and right before a set of three gates take you in a long sweeping turn to the left, onto another broad trail that sends you east down the fall line.
I had passed the fourth and fifth gates and was headed to the right at some speed when suddenly I felt my left ski tracking straight down the mountain, as if it had a mind of its own.
I managed to recover control of the ski and make it to the bottom of the mountain in one piece. But after I saw my time -- six seconds slower than my best time last year -- I realized what had been going on with my left ski up in the third turn.
I had been skiing like a rank beginner.
My weight had been on my uphill ski. There was no way I could turn because the left -- or downhill -- ski had no weight on it. And as I reconstructed this miserable run, I came to understand that at every point along the course, my form had been flawed.
It was a repetition of my failures in each of the two prior years.
I had allowed fear -- lurking fear that I almost didn't recognize -- to steal my courage and my chance of making a decent race out of it.
I was disappointed in myself. I acknowledged the character flaw that prevented me from excelling. The very presence of gates -- flags mounted on poles driven into the snow -- had shut down my brain. Instead of forcing myself down the steepest, fastest course, I had reared back, avoiding gravity, allowing timidity to choose my technique.
For a few hours, I pondered the notion that good sense should dictate no more downhill raciing -- and perhaps no more skiing -- for me.
By the next day, I was trying to think of a way to get back north and back into races.
But that will have to wait another year. I have turned 68, and there may not be that many years left to do the things I wish to accomplish. But for now, I have to get the torn rotator cuff in my left shoulder repaired and rehabilitated. I'm told this will take several months.
At present, even the act of typing on a keyboard is painful, so sailing -- and perhaps even writing -- may be restrained, too.
But by summer, if all goes well, I should be back on Robin and, I hope, working on a new book project.
The good news out of all of these experiences is that I seem still capable of learning, and that is the best news of all.