Learning the ropes: the magic of skiing with kids

“Another green sign!” Four-year-old Jude yells into the wind, pointing excitedly with his hand. He darts across the trail, making his way straight to the next trail marker. He stops, his little wedge still a bit shaky but allowing him to make his way, and stares up at the sign. As I pull my skis next to his, I can see him nibbling on his lower lip as he studieds the sign intently. With patience I didn’t know I had, I waited for him to find what he was looking for …

“The Y trail goes this way! The arrow is pointing this way!” he announced proudly, pointing down the mountain toward skier’s left. Once again, he darted dangerously across the trail to the next green sign with a fierce sense of determination and pride. With a little encouragement from his grownup, the straight descent power wedge transitioned into shaky little turns as he maneuved his way to the next sign.

We did this at every single trail sign that we came to, no exceptions. We study the letters, and discuss whether we should take the H Trail this time or stay on the Y Trail. It is a big moment. Not only is he learning his letters, but he is creating his own route, remembering where we went yesterday and thinking about what the conditions were like on each trail. Jude doesn’t like the H Trail because it leads to the flat part where he has to skate (or walk slowly under protest). He likes the Y trail, but there aren’t very many signs after the first section so he doesn’t get to boss me around as much.

Jude decides that we should stick to the Y trail, ride the Snowshed chairlift and then take the N trail to the Water Chair. And then have snack. And then maybe one run on Snowshed and then a second snack — but this time next to the snowmobiles! We are very busy planning our runs and snacks, as we check the sign again for the right letters and arrows.

But on the way down, we play games. We stomp the bugs as hard as we can with our skis, we search for freshies and Yeti monsters hidden in the woods and on the trail, and we ask if we can have our snacks. We pretend we are zooming airplanes or yodeling monkeys, or that we are going super fast on our snowmobiles around the obstacles in the trail. And we have snacks. We reach for the sky and we touch our boots. And we have snacks. We pretend that we are silly monsters and even practice skiing with only one ski. And we have snacks. We skied forward and backward and upside down. And had snacks. We are so strong that we can pick the safety bar up all by ourselves and carry our skis without any help from grownups, thank you very much.

It is an amazing time. I watched, over a period of two weeks, while my four year old nephew grew up right before my eyes. For two weeks, we skied together every morning. We counted chairlifts and read trail signs. I watched as he learned to make his own decisions, choosing to turn around people who had fallen rather than crash into them. I admired the perseverance of a little skier carrying his skis as they wiggled around in all different directions. And I beamed with pride as he rode the lift with his dad, mom and older brother together as a family for the first time.

All his hard work over two weeks resulted in one big moment: skiing together with his family, Even now, my most treasured ski memories aren’t these big powder days but the ones where I’m with my family. My favorite photos are the ones with my siblings, my spouse, my parents and my cousins. I can’t express how super stoked I was to have my brother and his family make the commitment to quarantine for two weeks so that his boys could still ski at Killington this year. No matter what happens this season, this will still be the best two weeks of the winter. Unless, I can convince them to move here …