It seemed fated that I would get the same ski instructor as last year AND have private lessons all week after paying for group ones - but the ski gods must be on my side. If you read last year's post I won't have to go into how amazing it is to do something this challenging in middle age - so I'll just say "it is amazing to do something this challenging in middle age!" I was nervous as hell riding up to the lodge thinking it was going to be a disaster as I hadn't skied at all since last year, but after my first tentative 1/2 hour or so on my rented skis Smitty flew down the hill to welcome me back and promptly took me to the top of the mountain for our first run of the week. I had lessons every day from 9:30 to 12:30 and would pass out in a death-style nap after lunch. I was emotionally & mentally exhausted the first couple of days. Some friends I had made last year returned & we had joyous 4 course dinners together every night. I was being pushed at a much higher level than I would ever push myself. I would dread the next morning's class. I would be relieved when lunch came & I was on my own in the afternoon. Sometimes after a big wipe out I'd ask myself why I was doing this? My natural state is lying flat on my back reading a book. So why am I doing this? Because anything that I have this much resistance to is worth doing - anything this hard is worth doing. And it's how I feel at the end of the week - or how I felt at the end of last year's week that made me sign up again: I felt like I had grown; not just as an athlete or a skier but as a person. I had risked looking foolish and awkward doing something that feels so unnatural and discovered the joy of acquiring just the wee-est amount of skill. In the past, I've learned things that came easily to me, and have practiced things I have natural gifts for, but the challenge of learning something that does not come easily and I have no gift for (Smitty will vouch for that) seems to have a more profound effect - it's made me see that natural ability makes for ease of learning, but for someone like me, nothing short of grunting hard work is going to make me a skiier. I could not have done this alone though. I had massive amounts of support, attention and love from the ski school and my fellow skiers at the lodge. My instructor said I'd made HUGE progress this week, and I knew he wasn't just fishing for a bigger tip - I felt it. I knew in my bones when I was doing it right & when I was doing it wrong. We tried a few things that were too ambitious, resulting in some pretty ugly tumbles and pulled muscles. This week I gained enough speed that falling was slightly more dangerous. One fall I slid so far that my skis & poles were nowhere in sight. My friends that ski with Jean Mayer, the owner of the lodge and director of the ski school (and former Olympic skier), say that "falling is not an option." He reports they are going 55 mph. So now I am back in Austin, doing easy non-challenging activities, pining for that fulfilling camaraderie of ski week. The skiing is about 1/2 of the joy, the other half is Jean's disarmingly intimate hotel, where we are all pushed out of yet another comfort zone (emotional distance) and forced to bond with each other. After the first night, there is no resistance as we gleefully greet each other in excited anticipation of discussing the day's skiing. I spent entire 3 hour dinners discussing nothing but skiing, which was amazing considering how little time I've spent doing it - but having missed out on sports my whole life, I finally see how it bonds people. I also discovered that skiing is unforgiving to a mindset of negativity, self-pity and inner whininess. I know because I've tried it (this is my natural state around things I am afraid of) and your skiing will reflect the mindset you carry! I got into the habit of "acting as if" I was bad ass & unafraid, and sometimes it worked! But ultimately, the juiciest experience is that very still moment when I'm facing down a steeper drop that I'd faced before, where there was no world except for me poised on an edge of snow with plastic sticks on my feet, my eyes looking at the point where I would make my first turn (not at the bottom), remembering to aggressively throw myself down the hill (this part is purely an act of faith), and that miraculous moment where I go for it & bypass the voice that says NO. I say YES with a new part of me, and I'm beginning to trust this "yes" more. This week was all about the bravado of me not being afraid of steep...at this rate, I could see this sport providing unlimited learning challenge...and this year, I'll get a lot more days of skiing in if everything goes as planned :-)
It seemed fated that I would get the same ski instructor as last year AND have private lessons all week after paying for group ones - but the ski gods must be on my side. If you read last year's post I won't have to go into how amazing it is to do something this challenging in middle age - so I'll just say "it is amazing to do something this challenging in middle age!" I was nervous as hell riding up to the lodge thinking it was going to be a disaster as I hadn't skied at all since last year, but after my first tentative 1/2 hour or so on my rented skis Smitty flew down the hill to welcome me back and promptly took me to the top of the mountain for our first run of the week. I had lessons every day from 9:30 to 12:30 and would pass out in a death-style nap after lunch. I was emotionally & mentally exhausted the first couple of days. Some friends I had made last year returned & we had joyous 4 course dinners together every night. I was being pushed at a much higher level than I would ever push myself. I would dread the next morning's class. I would be relieved when lunch came & I was on my own in the afternoon. Sometimes after a big wipe out I'd ask myself why I was doing this? My natural state is lying flat on my back reading a book. So why am I doing this? Because anything that I have this much resistance to is worth doing - anything this hard is worth doing. And it's how I feel at the end of the week - or how I felt at the end of last year's week that made me sign up again: I felt like I had grown; not just as an athlete or a skier but as a person. I had risked looking foolish and awkward doing something that feels so unnatural and discovered the joy of acquiring just the wee-est amount of skill. In the past, I've learned things that came easily to me, and have practiced things I have natural gifts for, but the challenge of learning something that does not come easily and I have no gift for (Smitty will vouch for that) seems to have a more profound effect - it's made me see that natural ability makes for ease of learning, but for someone like me, nothing short of grunting hard work is going to make me a skiier. I could not have done this alone though. I had massive amounts of support, attention and love from the ski school and my fellow skiers at the lodge. My instructor said I'd made HUGE progress this week, and I knew he wasn't just fishing for a bigger tip - I felt it. I knew in my bones when I was doing it right & when I was doing it wrong. We tried a few things that were too ambitious, resulting in some pretty ugly tumbles and pulled muscles. This week I gained enough speed that falling was slightly more dangerous. One fall I slid so far that my skis & poles were nowhere in sight. My friends that ski with Jean Mayer, the owner of the lodge and director of the ski school (and former Olympic skier), say that "falling is not an option." He reports they are going 55 mph. So now I am back in Austin, doing easy non-challenging activities, pining for that fulfilling camaraderie of ski week. The skiing is about 1/2 of the joy, the other half is Jean's disarmingly intimate hotel, where we are all pushed out of yet another comfort zone (emotional distance) and forced to bond with each other. After the first night, there is no resistance as we gleefully greet each other in excited anticipation of discussing the day's skiing. I spent entire 3 hour dinners discussing nothing but skiing, which was amazing considering how little time I've spent doing it - but having missed out on sports my whole life, I finally see how it bonds people. I also discovered that skiing is unforgiving to a mindset of negativity, self-pity and inner whininess. I know because I've tried it (this is my natural state around things I am afraid of) and your skiing will reflect the mindset you carry! I got into the habit of "acting as if" I was bad ass & unafraid, and sometimes it worked! But ultimately, the juiciest experience is that very still moment when I'm facing down a steeper drop that I'd faced before, where there was no world except for me poised on an edge of snow with plastic sticks on my feet, my eyes looking at the point where I would make my first turn (not at the bottom), remembering to aggressively throw myself down the hill (this part is purely an act of faith), and that miraculous moment where I go for it & bypass the voice that says NO. I say YES with a new part of me, and I'm beginning to trust this "yes" more. This week was all about the bravado of me not being afraid of steep...at this rate, I could see this sport providing unlimited learning challenge...and this year, I'll get a lot more days of skiing in if everything goes as planned :-)
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