EAR AND FREEDOM
ON THE DOWNHILL RUN
A Widow Bit – Jan. 16, 2011
By Mary Koch

            Here’s what an out-of-body experience is like:

            I was innocently enjoying a glass of wine with my daughter-in-law, Becki, who’d dropped by after giving her daughter-in-law her first skiing lesson. Becki was proud and excited by how quickly Yessica is learning the sport. They’d be going up for lessons every Friday afternoon, she said.

            That’s when some other entity took control of my vocal mechanisms. I heard myself say, “Oh, I’d love to go with you.” I was still wondering who said that as Becki picked up her cell phone to arrange rental ski equipment for me on the following Friday.

            I gave up skiing after my husband’s stroke. About a year ago, nostalgia drove me to the ski hill in late winter. I skied alone, and it was a socked-in, gloomy, rainy day. As I crept down the foggy runs at old-lady speed, I was reminded that skiing requires certain thigh muscles that apparently have no other reason for existing, because I certainly don’t use them in everyday life. I figured that was my last time on skis. Ever.

            As Friday approached, and despite snow and blustering winds, the dog enjoyed particularly long and brisk walks as I desperately tried to get into some semblance of “shape.” It was as futile as cramming all night for an exam. I recall the classic student’s lament: “If you don’t know it by now, you never will.” What was I thinking? That at age 66 I could resume a sport I’d never even mastered in my prime? And when the heck was my prime, anyway?

            By Friday afternoon the sun was shining, the sky blue and the ski area a wintery paradise. Becki and Yessica waited patiently while I struggled to put on the ski boots. Yessica – the alleged beginner – finally had to help me. This is going well, I muttered to myself. I was already exhausted, and I hadn’t skied an inch.

            After a couple of timid warm-up runs on the junior hill, I rode the chair lift to the top of the mountain.

            “Oh, my God!” I gasped as the chair crested the summit.

            “What? What!?” the young couple who were riding with me asked in concern.

            “The view!” I exclaimed.

            “Oh, yeah,” they said and grinned, a little embarrassed. They’d been skiing all day and had grown accustomed to the exquisite, 360-degree vista of snow-clad mountains, forests and valleys. It’d been 18 years since I’d seen that particular view.

            That’s the privilege of skiing, to be up there next to heaven and then to glide freely downward as gravity pulls you back to earth. Yes, I had to work those thigh muscles hard to keep gravity from pulling too fast. I made frequent stops to savor the view, breathe heavily, and lean on my poles.

            Skiing is where fear intersects with freedom – fear of falling, freedom of motion. It put me totally back into my body, and even though it’s a 66-year-old body, there’s nowhere else I care to be.