Winter Wonderland

I’m on a weekend snow trip, which, for those who know me, is a strange thing to hear from me. Having grown up with snow, then choosing to leave it, I am not usually one who seeks out how to return to it. I’m not a snow sport enthusiast – my family has never been to a ski lodge, and as a kid I did nothing more than sled occasionally. No snow shoeing, no cross-country skiing, no downhill skiing, no snow mobiling. Despite being raised in the snow, neither of my parents enjoyed any of these snow activities. Not that they were summer sports enthusiasts, either. Mostly I remember being cold. I grew up before Gore-Tex, before layers of artificial fibers proved their ability to wick, before, even, “wick” was a verb, and it was still a mere noun. Cold fingers, cold toes, cold legs, cold everything. One year my folks got NFL season tickets for our family. We were trapped in the stands with every possible layer of clothing but none that eliminated the cold. Trapped in the stands with hot cocoa to warm us on the inside, but the cocoa couldn’t stay warm after a sip or two. Trapped in the stands and so miserable that I’m sure I’ve never thanked my parents for season tickets that other kids would have coveted. I’m sure I used my bone-cold, can’t-get-warm-even-in-the-car-on-the-way-home misery to punish them endlessly for the mistake of trying to create something lovely like a family football day.

I was an undergrad in a place with winters so cold that my eyelashes would freeze together after my eyes watered as part of a simple physiological survival response – like antifreeze on the windshield – keep it moist with salty liquid and nothing will crack. The sidewalks of the steepest hill on campus were heated, because without that, no one could make it up to their classes. I confess I rather enjoyed the fantasy of coeds trying desperately to make it up the hill before the sidewalks were updated, sliding back down in rows, a human Prometheus trail, with the addition of backpacks and knitted hats.

I did attempt downhill skiing once. In Scotland. I was with a friend who grew up skiing. Yellow, she knew, was the color of the “bunny runs” – the ones that people like me could attempt with no skill, no history, and no ability to maneuver in the awkward gear. Toddlers and small kids suited up for the first time on Lilliputian skis are a perfect match for the bunny hill, so off we headed to the chair lift to the top of the yellow run.

But it turns out that in Scotland, “yellow” meant something else, and it took me an entire day to go down one run: one day is the length of time it takes to fall down ungracefully, struggle to get up, move a few more inches downhill, then start the process again. The only reason I went down the yellow run was because after the ski lift dropped me off at the top, there was no other way to get down. This was something that I, a lifetime non-skier, had not known: there’s no return chair lift. Almost the only means of transportation that goes only one way, now that I think of it. I wasn’t keen on heading down the precipitous drop. But there was no airlift, the only other way I imagined out of this predicament. So I had to go down the slope, initially on my skis. It’s only after I fell and like a beetle on its back wiggled and wriggled and squirmed until I could be in the right position to be helped up that I found something humorous and the fear eventually lifted. Oh, and as I bring this day fully back from memory, I recall that at some time during the falling-down-the-slope routine we saw a snowstorm approach.

By the end of the day (it really did take most of the day to go down one slope) I was covered in snow (with pictures of that adventure to show it). It was the kind of day that should have ended more unpleasant and unhappy than it was, given my wet, cold, physically challenged incapacity to stand up after falling down, but my friend and I eventually laughed and laughed and laughed. Something about being in one’s 20’s casts mishaps like this with a cheerful afterglow, and even though there were moments of utter terror and the mule-stubborn “nuh-uh” initial reaction to the awareness that the only way to end something is to endure something even worse. Something about being in my 20’s that I didn’t master as a young kid, so I didn’t punish my friend endlessly for turning me into a pathetic, frightened, half-dead cold beetle on an advanced ski run in a foreign country. My parents I punished, before, during, and after each game; my friend I forgave before I was even one tenth of the way down the slope.

Anyway, here I am, out in the boondocks, in a place so remote that the snow is deep enough to sink through, past the top of my boots. Remote, yes; rustic, no. We’re staying in a recently built modern home with individual heaters in each room, a gourmet kitchen (stocked overly well with what you might expect from two moms who love to eat good food), and a fireplace surrounded by a big stone hearth. The kids have Legos and hexbug nanos and games and other toys and bunk beds. They’ve built two forts already, and have figured out how to peel off layers as they get warmer and warmer the deeper they get into snow play. They’ve eaten snow and delicately held icicles cracked off from tall buildings. I’ve got my adult pleasures all around this lovely dwelling: the border of a 300-piece puzzle completed, just waiting for me to lose hours in it’s completion; a couple of evocative drawings from the myriad art supplies I’ve brought, and one three-person drawing created with each of us taking turns adding something until it reached the slapstick; a glass of a good white Graves Bordeaux; a couple of McVities Digestives, a crumbly and just sweet-enough cracker that holds memories of that Scotland trip; adults and kids building more memories that will solidify our friendships. I’ve taken the (requisite) photos of snowy tree-limbs and snow-blanketed meadows. And I’ve brought along this little laptop so I can write.

And I’ve got gear now – clothes and layers that wick, that actually kept me warm as I trudged through the snow with very little ability to move my limbs because I was so layered and bundled, and could barely hear as I was wearing ear muffs under my fleece-lined ear-flap hat. An after-dinner, pitch dark walk in the snow at night, the only light coming from flashlights and head lamps. A mid-morning tramp over snow ridges on my first venture with snow shoes. A second snow shoeing adventure across tall snow banks, walking through the trees and seeing the footprints of the animals who’d come to forage. Sled runs – the first ones short and windy, the second ones sending my son and I airborne, picking up the kind of speed that requires screaming with a mixture of delight and terror. Sled runs – I haven’t been on a sled since I was a kid, and it felt youthful and silly to have such joy from a flimsy plastic contraption, but there it was, joy. [My son was less thrilled with the second run – having experienced for the first time the way snow hitting your face feels like a thousand pin pricks – and defiantly/tearfully called the sledding over. He returned to it the next day, however, on a much less steep yet far longer slope, and it was fatigue that overcame the activity, not fear. His first victory in snow sports!]

I’m sitting in a warm and toasty home, next to the fireplace, with views of snowy trees and hills and snowy mounds and bare trees and snowy rifts and puffy white clouds and white mist. I’ve had more enjoyment with snow and snow sports in one weekend than I had in the first 20 years of my life. Maybe I’ll give cross-country skiing a try later this season.