© Sauce*Box, Winter 1996/97.
All rights revert to author.
Miss December 1995
by Kathleen Ely
"Skiing is like sex," Bill Kittredge used to say. "There are things that should never be written about because doing them is so much better than any words about them can be." Maybe he was right.
Helena is nestled in a great mountain valley--any direction you look there are mountains. If you cross the valley floor towards Marysville, you can see the big rounded peak that is Great Divide. After spending $50 on groceries--four kids and two grownups makes for hungry folks--and spending hours loading up--that's twelve skis, twelve ski poles, twelve ski boots, plus an equal number of gloves and mittens, assorted hats, scarves and coats--then we finally had the van packed and took off. That peak was white all over, like an immense white breast of some great goddess over the horizon.
"Looks good," Tim says. "Yup, looks like good skiing."
You have to turn off the paved highway up a dirt road for nearly seven miles. All along the way there were big pickup trucks with men in orange; hunting season opened up last week. You can also see signs of the diggings everywhere--pits blasted out of the earth, the dynamite house three feet from the road with walls three foot thick, the stone ledgers of the foundries. At one point--in 1863--there were more folks living in Marysville than in Helena. The town now though is mostly empty but the old churches are lovingly restored, though half the houses are unlived in or shacks, the heavy stones of the candy store where Tim used to live andwhere Hannah says she once really something "really strange, like a ghost." Three curves past the Grange Hall, and you're at the ski hill.
Tim is 42 and he's probably been skiing this hill for 36 years. It's changed a lot since then, he tells me, as he waves and explains where this trail and that trail were, how one year they were able to ski all the way back to town thirty miles and another they had to dodge rocks like you do in those old 3-D movies with 'em comin' right at ya. It's one of those off/again on/again kind of ski places, started up by some old guy who came home after WWII and thought this would be just the place because it was a good year for snow, but sometimes it isn't....they all look the same, these little hills, with the faintly Tyrolean air--at Great Divide the blue curves that border every window have alpine flowers hand-painted on them. There's a better ski shop now and good rentals, though the lodge looks just as it must have in the sixties: a snack bar (which the old ski club used to run as a concession; Tim remembers one winter selling the hot chocolate and French fries that are so essential), a fireplace, ski posters on the walls, and everywhere big wooden benches. A family sits at one, at another, a knot of six adolescent boys who have to be snowboarders, and over there, a clutch of Japanese students--the latest invasion to our state--who go to school at the little private Catholic college in town.
The "skiing aristocracy" I call those families. It's the first day of skiing and, true, the snow looks good, but it's early in the year and not as good as Big Sky or Bridger Bowl. But this aristocracy would never miss out on the first day at this particular place; that's why Tim is here. He belonged to the ski club which bought out the original owner and he knows every inch of the ski area like the back of his hand. There's a whole etiquette to being a member of this group; I fit in on the verge because I'm a native Montanan, too, and I skiied Bridger in my youth like a fiend. That means I know the rules, too, and they all come back to me in a flood as we step into our skis.
My son, Zen, who is six, begs me to help him get his boots on. This voice comes out of my head, a voice that drives me crazy, it's my mother's! "Well, if you can't get 'em on, then I guess you can't go skiing. If you're not old enough to get into your equipment, you oughta stay in the lodge." And as soon as I see the look in his face, I think to myself, "Oh, jeez, she was right, she was right." I think, this is part of letting go, making him do things himself. I think, damn, how much I hated it when my mother said that to me. So I help him a little, just enough to talk him through it, but I don't do it for him.
There's maybe twenty folks in the lift line so we pair up; that's one of those rules of ski etiquette. Zen insists on going with Hannah, and I ride up with Kevin. "I hate these things," he tells me. "I'm afraid of heights." I don't worry about us getting on because Chuck Porte, the bass man in Tim's band and his best friend his whole life, is running the tow. An extremely bright guy, married to Dawn, whom he fell in love with when she was sixteen, a zaftig blonde, just after Tim had dumped her and now he's got three kids and no steady income but this sort of thing. Dawn's a nurse; she and I both turned forty this week. Both Tim and Chuck know what it's like to deal with a Scorpio born in 1955; no wonder they both need the release of playing the reggae beat every couple of weeks.
I hand Chuck a huge cinnamon roll I baked that morning (mom-baked rolls are the primary nutrients for young skiers) and he helps on to the chair. I take Kevin's poles and tell him, "Look back from the center!" and the blue metal lift chair sweeps us up, the pole between us, swaying and swinging, up, up, until we're fifty feet above the ground and everything looks tiny.
"I hate heights!" screams Kevin. "I hate heights." My mom erupts again.
"Next time I'll know to bring duct tape," I tell him in my most menacing voice. Another of the unwritten rules: Your children shalt not squeal. I think of how I bragged up Kevin's skiing to Tim because whenever I saw him ski with my mother he was a fireball. Now he sits here shivering on the chair and he's afraid; I'm embarassed.
We manage to slide off the chair up at the top and off comes Zen with Hannah--he leaps when he sees he's not going to ski off and takes a good tumble...then Tim with little Aaron. His kids are down the hill like bullets out of a gun; mine are both falling down and crying. My mother's voice godes them and I alternately try to ignore them and offer helpful suggestions. Tim comes back a while later, having already gone down the hill once and up again on the lift; my kids are still on the first big slope. We decide to simply abandon Kevin, "See ya at the bottom, dude." With Zen, Tim is very patient: skis with him between his legs, guides him along with his poles, carries him on his back. Eventually, though, he gets to the point where he would rather walk than ski. "Go into the chalet at the bottom," I tell him. "And wait for me."
I take off, a slow and jerky start myself, since I've not skiied for two years. I can feel it in my ankles and in the haunches. Big awkward turns I make, until near the bottom when it flattens out and now my stem christie takes over and I don't look half bad. Skiing is a lot about looking: how you look, looking at the tips of your skis, looking at the terrain around you. Maybe that's one of the reasons I like it so much, that attentiveness that is so necessary, that attunment to the world around you. You have to be so open to the world to ski well.
Hannah greets me at the bottom and we ride to the top together but she skis past me real fast and this time, without the kids, it's more leisurely for me. Tim whizzes by and stops to kiss me and offer a little advice. "Stop swinging your arms around. It's throwing your weight off." I try implementing his suggestion but my old habits die hard. Finally I get the jist of it and then he tells me, "Just point those tits downhill and let the rest of your body do the turning." I have a fantasy on the way down that I am a Playboy bunny and the cameras are waiting for me at the bottom of the hill. I am so engrossed by the possibility of those waiting cameras that I fly effortlessly down the hill. Simple mind over matter.
Down at the bottom, we set up camp on a corner table with food for the kids out of the big box I've brought. Allowing yourself to be so open to the world means you're still vulnerable so one of the unspoken rules is to stick to yourself, find your place and quietly prepare for the next run. About this time it starts to rain. Not your usual Montana spit but full scale driving rain like you see back East; if it were snow, this would be a blizzard but instead it just soaks you to the bone.
The lift breaks down--probably water in the engine--Tim and I go out to smoke under an outdoor barbeque and when I look up the hill I am momentarily shunned. A flock of snowboarders have climbed up the hill--37, I counted--are lined up on the hill above the chalet. It looks, for a moment, like something out of Hitchcock's The Birds until I realize they are all there, up in the rain, waiting to jump off an impromptu, well, the only word for it is sitz mark. Used to be a polite skier filled in their sitzes, but these days they're just another excuse for serious boarding.
I love to watch the boys--and it's mostly boys, only the occasional girl--who snowboard. They're like little boys in big clothes and mind you, they're not your Columbia or Bugaboo brands but oversized made out of recycled something, no hats, but they're warm: it's the layered look. My second run down one of them comes whizzing down the hill above me and falls to his knees on his board right near me. I look at him and smile (thinking I'm old enough to be his mother). He's got on a big beige Carhartz suit and his head is nearly shaved except for a rim of red fringe and a little slash of red goatee down the middle of his chin. "It looks like you're praying," I say to him. He grins. "I am." And takes off in a whirl of snow.
The snowboarders fling themselves down the slope with abandon on four foot boards strapped to their feet and it is that I admire so much, that fearlessness of when you are twenty and the world is waiting for you so you gotta go fast. One of the reasons I like Tim is that he still has that bravado that comes from racing, being in command of your body as it flies. He makes love like that, too.
When Tim and I go up together Chuck is now up at the top and he throws snowballs at us. I treat him like he's king of the hill because he is Tim's best friend and I want him to say to Tim, "That one's a keeper." Not that I'm sure I want to be kept but I like the idea of extending how I feel about Tim to the rest of the world. Mi ami est son ami.
We go back to the lodge soaking wet, to the skin. The kids are like hungry animals and need more than what's in the box; they beg for french fries and M
Ms. Tim leans over and talks to a teenage cutie with long wet curly hair. "Would your dad let you get some?" She smiles shyly at him. "Nah, he would say no. We're not going to spend any money." Tim gives her his Irish smile but gives in to the kids anyway.
Some kind of melodrama erupts amongst the Japanese students and I watch it unfold as if it were a morning television show. One of the boys has insulted one of the girls to the point where she is crying in public which embarasses all concerned to the point that loud arguing erupts. In Japan, this would never happen; but here, in Montana, in America, the freedom to express emotion finally wells up and I hope the pretty girl with her dark hair cut short in shock waves doesn't commit hari-kari with her ski poles.
Kevin has gone up by himself twice and begs for one last run. Somewhere during the day his courage returned and he schusses the hill as if he had been doing it his whole life. By the time he comes back we have the van all loaded up and head back to town, hungry, tired, wet, wet, wet.
The rain is melting snow all the way back and the grey brown of the Montana hills shows through. Tim and I talk about the etiquette of the hill. "Oh, yeah," he tells me. "There's a whole bunch of rules but you learn em by watching other folks. Pair up in the lift line. Fill in your sitz marks. Look up the hill before you go. Slow skiers have the right of way. If someone falls, check them out--it could have been you. And children never cry." He goes on to tell me how skiing is all part of the toughening process, how skiing is about helping your kids to grow up and you to stay young, how skiing is just one more metaphor for the good life.
It's dark by the time we get home. Hot baths are the first order and then the stew I made the night before. I pull down the Monopoly game and Battleship and we play on my bed with all four kids wrestling around and the dogs--Rusty and Sasha--trying to get in the action. Finally we settle down to watch a video and the next thing I know Tim is trying to wake me so I can stumble to bed where I dream about the snow sure to come soon--deep, fresh powder--and slip, slip, slipping down the hill, Miss December on that last run.... .
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