A surrendering laugh erupted. You know, the kind where you try so hard to make something happen, but you just have to give up and laugh at the silliness of it all—The old lipstick on a pig or making lemonade from lemons. Fake it until you make it. These are all classic terms for when the world doesn’t go your way, so you have to put on a bright, smiley face and push through anyway.
I tried to stop; I really did. But if you were out on the mountain on Saturday morning, even with the re-groom, you knew it wasn’t going to be anything but a surrendering laugh. It started as I got out of my car and felt the ground underneath my boots, which should have been retired about 10 years ago. But they are my favorite, and so I wear them anyway, even when I should have probably had Yak Tracks on.
And this was a transition-required morning. The stairs to the K1 were closed due to icing, never mind the entire mountain. I had to take my skis off my shoulder and use them as poles as I walked up to the ski club. Well, I think walk was a bit overzealous. I slid sideways until I found someone’s dug-in footsteps. I laughed the entire way up to the club, chuckling to myself at the insanity that is skiers.
Because there was never any doubt that we were skiing that day. Kids are never afraid of the weather, and downhill enthusiasts are legit off-kilter folk. We sat around for an hour until Killington had the lifts running, actually excited to see what kind of conditions awaited us farther up the mountain. That’s right. The whole world is told to stay off the road, and we are waiting to go deeper into the craziness on a pair of skis.
So we went up the only lift available—the Snowdon 6 and gathered all 50 Future Stars together for the longest human slalom in the history of human slaloms. Not really, but kids don’t know those kind of facts, and Siri didn’t know what a human slalom was, so we claimed it. We chose Mouse Run, thinking we would have the best chance on a green trail. Haha. Mother Nature did not agree!
It was solid. Like, yellow with visible groomer tracks perfectly placed down the whole thing. Immovable groomer tracks. Groomer tracks where the rain had filled in the grooves and frozen over, creating a now perfectly smooth surface where you needed World Cup edges to even make a dent in them. Kids and coaches were sliding all over the place, fighting to stay upright and still on a surface that allowed you to do anything but.
And it was loud. Holy crow. We were yelling at the top of our lungs as we tried to explain how a human slalom works. As skiers and snowboarders flew past, they made so much noise that it was like a rumbling growl of a bear. There was no hope of hearing over the vibrations.
And so we laughed—And tried to ski. You could turn, no problem, it was the stopping that seemed to be the biggest challenge. Especially when trying to manipulate around small children posed as gates for a race course. You just had to dig your edges in pretty deep and hope they would engage the snow at some point, But the joke was on me since I’ve been working for the past two decades to decrease my edge angles from the intensity of my racing days.
But little kids don’t care about ice, frozen conditions, lift lines, or closed lifts. They are on the hill for an adventure, looking for fun signs and variable terrain that challenge them. They are, in fact, looking for a challenge and looking for something to wake them up out of the slumber that is everyday life. They want new experiences, maybe because they don’t know the consequences of those moments but because the challenge is fun. They are excited about change.
In her book, “Change Enthusiasm,” Cassandra Worthy writes that when approached with change, you can either get bitter or you can get better. You can complain about the challenges that now confront you, or you can embrace that challenge, dive in with both skis on, and work on becoming a better skier. But it has to be a conscious decision to work toward improvement. Just sliding down the mountain or living life unconsciously doesn’t make anything better. A good skier, a good human, is always thinking about something. How can this moment make me a better skier? How can this moment make me a better human—How can I embrace this new challenge? This first step? Well, you can’t get better at skiing if you don’t have your skis on.
Merisa Sherman is a longtime Killington Resident, global real estate advisor, and Coach PomPom. She can be found in the woods or at [email protected].
