So a month or more ago, in December, the Thursday night of the big windstorm; do you remember? Trees came crashing down on hapless parked cars! Power died all over Washington for days! I had the next day off work!

Anyway. So that evening, Thursday evening, after work, I had planned to go to the slopes with my work buddies Marc and Josiah. They were going to head out to the slopes, do a few night runs; I was going to rent my first snowboard and take a lesson. The weather freaked a lot of people out, and they told us we should NOT drive out to Snoqualmie, but we’d been planning on going for weeks, there was a ton of fresh powder, and we would not be deterred.

The drive out was a little hairy, even in my coworker’s AWD workhorse. There were people ranged along the side of the road, putting on chains; we passed at least one fresh accident; but we made it all right through the snowy nighttime madness. At Summit Central, we parked and I bid adieu to the work peeps and headed in to sign up for the class.

But oh! The perils of showing up without calling! The instructor couldn’t make it out, because of the weather. So there were no lessons available. Marc and Josiah were long gone; I could have tried their cells, but it seemed unlikely they’d be answering as they whizzed down the mountain. Damn. Well, to make the best of a disappointing situation, I rented skis, thinking that even though it HAD been about 10 years since I’d ridden them, at least I could probably get back up to speed by myself without killing myself. I pretended like I knew what I was doing as I answered the questions I needed to answer to rent the skies, and I must have been reasonably convincing, because the unconcerned staff completely ignored me after loading me up with boots, skies, and poles, none of which I quite remembered how to put on. I muddled through and got it mostly right. Relearning how to walk through the place in ski boots was a little embarrassing (friends, where are my friends? I needed moral support like nobody! It’s cool though, I’m strong…) and then being completely clueless about how to attach my lift ticket was another adventure that eventually I solicited help for from the sympathetic woman behind the glass window. She gave me a map of the mountain, too, which the yawning kids in the rental shop had neglected to provide, and pointed me firmly toward the bunny slopes, thank god.

So I fumbled my way over, relearning how to hold the poles, not trip over my own skies on flat ground, and make forward progress. Fortunately for me, thanks to the inclement weather, few were around to witness my pathetic thrashings. When I finally made it to the base of the chair lift, no one else was in line, so the very accomodating lift operator could coach me on how to get on the chair without any other witnesses. I did okay. Getting off–little scary–hey, now, it had been ten years! And I’d only ever been skiing four times before! And I was alone! Stop snickering. But I made it, I was on top of the little bunny hill, and I went down hesitantly, swooping back and forth, going about 2 miles an hour but not falling down, anyway, slowly gaining confidence and figuring out how to hold myself to not exhaust my legs immediately and starting to have a little fun by the bottom.

I went down the bunny hill several times, warming up, loosening up. And you know, night-skiing on an empty slope turns out to be awesome. You’re whizzing down this big white hill, there’s floodlights lighting up the main run but the trees are shrouded in darkness and mist, the silence is rushing past your ears like a frigid ghost, whispering, deepening the hush. And snow was still falling, and my cheeks were about ready to fall off my face from the wind, but my core was warm and I was starting to go FAST and weave around and get a little daring, and I thought “Okay!” I can do this. I thought I was finally ready for the next step up–the blue square, or whatever, instead of the green dot. So I forge my way over to the run next door, a blue one on my map. There appeared to be two lifts going up it, but the near one was out of service, so I slid over to the far one, got onto the chair with my now-confidently-practiced technique.

And went up, and up, and up. This new run, it turns out, is a nice long one. And–looking down on it–some parts seemed even a little scary. But no worries! All by myself, I had relearned to ski, and I was certain I had graduated from the greenies! My nervousness grew with the height, but I told myself I was being a weenie.

Disembarking at the top, I took my first look at the run from the ground, and quailed. Jeebus! It was steep! But I had vowed to challenge myself a bit, and this was the result. No going back now (the humiliating return trip on the chair lift did not occur to me for one moment.) I started down the slope. But I couldn’t go straight down without going *way* faster than I was comfortable with, so I tacked and jibed
one.
painful.
foot.
at.
a.
time.

And JEEZ, it was slow going, and DAMN, it was hard. I was not a very large fraction down the run, and I was already exhausted. And the occasional snowboarder bombing gleefully past me was NOT doing much for my self-confidence, and when no one was around, it was cold and awfully dark, and at some point I had lost sight of the chair lift so I wasn’t even sure I was going the right way any more, but I didn’t have much choice but to keep going a little bit at a time.

Finally, out of impatience and exhaustion and why-aren’t-I-having-a-better-time frustration, I began to allow myself a little more speed, a little more rein, a little more space between zigs and zags. I sped up. It was scary. A small relief to my screaming thighs, though. Pretty quickly, I fell for the first time that night. I happily recalled my dad telling me once when I was small and complaining about falling down while ice skating, “If you don’t fall down, you’re probably not learning anything.” I’m learning! I beatifically pondered this as I relaxed back into the super-comfy powder. Gosh, I was tired. A nap right there on the slope seemed like a great idea, except that I remembered tales of people freezing to death by sleeping in the snow, and there was a pair of skiers across the slope from me who were looking at me lying there in a concerned-stranger kind of way that was, once again, a little embarrassing. So I struggled back onto my skies and continued down, gradually more freely. Once I had fallen, I lost a little bit of my disinclination to fall, and my lessened fear made me stabler. By the bottom of the slope, I was feeling positively daring again, and the night’s earlier exultation had returned to me, a little bit.

I was going fast enough at the bottom that I wasn’t really in control of myself, and I missed the spot where you go to get on the chair again. And frankly, that run had been so epic that I wasn’t really prepared to do it again right away–on the way down, it had become clear to me that I was not quite ready for the blue square runs. It would be back to the bunny hill for me. So I ended up circling around the back of the lift machinery, and looked up at it, and saw the name of the run printed on it.

!!!That wasn’t the run I thought I was on at all! I stopped in my tracks and pulled out my map. Sure enough. That was no blue square run; that run, my friends, was a bona-fide black diamond! That I, a lone skiing novice, had made it down (albeit v-e-r-y slowly) with only one soft spill!

Well. That’s nice. I still wasn’t ready for another big challenge, so I went back to the bunny hill, this time with renewed confidence, speed, and daring. I even pushed myself enough that I took another spill, this one a major wipeout in which my neck cracked alarmingly and snow got into my pants, but man! What fun! And when it warmed up and started raining, I made my way into the cafe, where Marc and Josiah were waiting for me, and took me back to my car parked at work.

One of the best parts of the night was driving home from work once they dropped me off at my car over the 520 bridge about 20 minutes before the city shut it down, swinging back and forth in the wind and being blinded by giant waves craashing over the bridge and onto my windshield. Yay big storm! Yay solitary fear conquered! Yay winter!

-Undefeatable A