Life as a Mountain

I am writing this after returning from a week-long ski trip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. My wife and I have taken this annual vacation to Steamboat for most of the twenty years we’ve been skiing.

The title of this blog refers to one of my top ten favorite movies, “Life as a House” with Kevin Kline. The premise in the movie is that in the process of building a house with his estranged son, a father was able to rebuild their relationship. It’s a fabulous movie. Trust me.

And so, one can rebuild perspective by being outside, every day, all day, skiing on a mountain, bathed in wind and sunshine. You’re building your body and your character – for no sport affords so much opportunity for *judgment* as skiing.

You don’t think about many things when you’re flying down a mountain or negotiating patches of fluffy snow on a mogul, trying to avoid a big fall. Your entire being, mind and body, is connected to the skis, as you work your way down the trail. There just isn’t any bandwidth to reflect or let your mind wander.

Your heart is pumping, your lungs are grasping for every liter of air it can get at 3,000 meters above sea level, your thighs are burning, and you’re focused on both avoiding traffic and being flattened by a snow boarder.

And then you go to dinner and have a feast. Salad. Steak or fish. Potatoes. Desert. Red wine. (Not recommended for beginners!) I call it aboriginal skiing. It’s like the cave man chasing rabbits for food: he runs all day, collapses into a heap by the fire at sunset, eats burned meat, falls into a stupor, sleeps ten hours, gets up at dawn and does it all over again.

It tunes your body to its physical existence on this pale blue dot of a planet. You become one with the mountain and nature. It’s mystical.

After you do this for a week, you’re sunburned, exhausted, a few pounds lighter, and living on another plane of existence. You want to do it every day for the rest of your life.

There are ski instructors and staff who ski 120 days in a winter season. Some then head to New Zealand for the Austral winter and continue for another 120 days. It suspect most of them don’t own a computer, and if they do, they don’t have the foggiest idea who Phil Schiller or what an Xserve is.

In a way, I envy them, but that’s not my heritage. I have to live in both worlds, and so skiing helps me retain a sense of balance in my life.

My dream has always been to ski by day, write by night.

Life as a mountain.

John Martellaro