The Season of Brown

I’m pretty sure we had our last glimpse of winter from a mountaintop on Sunday. Saturday evening, Bill, Liam, and I drove two hours north up to Gilford, NH; we were skiing at Gunstock Mountain early Sunday morning with another family. Our oldest son, Will, had gone to Crotched Mountain, also in New Hampshire, with a friend to ski Saturday afternoon and night.

A drive north to the mountains never disappoints. And the fact that I can drive to the mountains still seems out of alignment with my Midwest born feet. However, on Sunday the lack of snow on that journey north meant one thing. The Season of Brown has arrived. Yet the summit of Gunstock, at 2,300 feet, had gotten four inches of snow a couple days earlier. When Gunstock came into sight, miles away, we recognized it because of the snowy wide strips running vertically down the mountain. The surrounding area was brown, just like the drive up. Aside from the snow at the very top, the trails weren’t covered in winter snow. Most of this was man-made snow — able to cling to the trails because the ground is still cold, the humidity in the atmosphere is just right, and the sun isn’t yet warm enough to melt it.

The snow on the trails was soft not slushy, but it was heading in that direction. It was hard work plowing through thick snow on some of the trails. My first thought was that it felt like skiing through peanut butter. Our friend we were skiing with named it more aptly: mashed potatoes.

Normally, I find a green run and ski it, by myself, from morning til close. Throughout my typical ski day, I build up confidence such that I don’t have to think about this ludicrous thing I’m doing. I get used to one trail’s curves, icy sheets, and gravelly frozen bits. I go slowly and stop often to take in the view. I don’t worry about getting hurt when I’m skiing alone, for I have complete confidence that one of those little five-year-olds who ski with no poles will get help for me if I happen to wipe out and not be able to get up.

But Sunday was different: our two families skied together every run. As we walked to the first chairlift, I coasted on a fine line between terror and peace. Blues and blacks scared me, yet I had a good set of greens under my belt for the season. Much like my snowshoeing expedition a few weeks back, I remembered that while down might be intimidating, I can ski across anything. Or, as an adult woman on the other side of fifty, I would be quite comfortable taking the skis off and walking down the mountain. Or sliding on my butt. I have choices. Our first run down would be a blue. Green is easiest, then blue, then black, then those crazy double blacks. There would be none of the latter that day.

I think the color label on the trail reflects the steepest part of that trail. I could tell on the blue trails that the earth was propped up a bit, pushing me faster than my comfortable green runs. Everyone skied ahead of me, but Bill. He took up his normal residence behind me, like the dad chasing behind his son’s bike the first time he rides solo. Bill did the same in Utah some thirty years ago when we were at a tough mountain, Snowbird, in which the green trails are the narrow mountain roads circling down the mountain. On that trip, Bill coaxed me down a blue run, away from the edge of a mountain. He stood at the top as I took off across the steep hill. I could traverse but not turn at the edge of the trail. Mentally, I couldn’t get past that moment in a turn when both skis point straight down the mountain. I fell instead. Then, I’d scoot around on my butt to go the other direction, stand up, traverse, and fall again. Perhaps I did this five or six times before I simply didn’t get up. Bill came whooshing down the mountain to my side. I was sobbing. His “let me give you a hug” was met with a fierce “a hug won’t get me off this %$#@ mountain!” I don’t remember how I made it down, but I know there was no hug involved. I had a six-inch purple bruise on the back of my thigh that trip from landing on my ski in the same place each time I fell.

As for Sunday’s trip, our friends had skied this mountain all season, so they had each trail’s personality memorized. They gave us a little debriefing before each run. The kicker was the black run with the “head wall.” Think forehead. A steep to vertical cliff landing at the bridge of a less steep nose. Maybe it was only twenty feet down. Maybe it was fifty. Or, was it a football field? I dropped in from one side and traversed across, cutting the edges of my skis into the side of the mountain to hold on. I was doing wide, ugly traverses leaning into the mountain. As I made the first turn —without a fall, I looked down to where the trail was a bit less angry, but still steep as a nose. I recognized Liam’s blue coat and black pants with a white wiggly puff attached to the back. He had his snow pants on backwards that day so all of his previous ski passes that should have been at his belly button were flying on his backside like a rabbit’s tail. He and his buddies decided not to use ski poles that day, and this made it very easy for him to do jumping jacks — with full extension of legs and arms — as he glided down the mountain.

I pulled my focus back to crossing the headwall. My shoulder was practically hugging the mountain. A straight, outstretched arm would’ve touched the ground. If I fell in place without sliding, which would be impossible, but if I did, my side would fall against the mountain. I wouldn’t fall down onto the the mountain for the side of the mountain was next to me. Watching Liam’s wild flying arms, I couldn’t help think that we both looked like hot messes coming down this trail, albeit for different reasons.

We weaved our way across the whole mountain, skiing most every run but the double blacks, and stopped around 2 p.m. After refreshments at the base, we packed up, anchored our ski bags on our backs, balanced our skis over a shoulder, and carried our poles in the other free hand. We landed on the pavement, out of the slush and mud puddles that had bloomed throughout the day. Then onto the gravel parking lot. A skier needs the right equipment for the job — as does a scuba diver or an astronaut. The lightness when removing the hard plastic boots, big helmet, sweaty gloves, and swishy snow pants leaves the released body feeling like it’s floating.

We slung our gear into the van, and in the driver’s seat, I slowly picked a path through the pot-holed lot onto the road. We were turning our backs on the snow. The woods around us had only dirty lumps of snow remaining. The trees weren’t yet budding. The dead leaves from fall sat as they had in late November. Entering the first Season of Brown for 2019 made me want to cry. The second Season of Brown will come again in November, after Halloween and weeks before the sparkle of winter again covers the dormant, dark ground and trees.

Snowshoes

Last weekend, I was on a solo writing retreat in the Berkshires.

Monday, March 4th

After six inches of snow last night, I worked in the morning then midday tested out my new snowshoes, plus accompanying “gators” designed to keep my calves dry and a water supply tucked into a backpack to keep my body hydrated.  Rather than drive somewhere, I decided to trek around the immediate area of where I’m staying.  There are several buildings on this timeshare plot of land, and around the perimeter, trees are dripping with snow. 

Putting snowshoes on feels like tying narrow tennis rackets to the bottoms of my feet.  My normal stride needs to widen to make room for the wider-than-my-feet snowshoes.  After twenty steps, my subconscious spoke, “Howdy, partner!”  The gait I’ve fallen into is reminiscent of a slightly bow-legged cowboy. 

My wander around the backyard is not a race.  I step slowly and methodically through the white canvas.  Whether dropping backwards into the snow to make a snow angel or writing in the snow by shuffling snow boots to draw a letter then taking a giant hop in order to start the next letter, I find the same giddiness in tableau blanc snow as I do in a new journal, an iced-over mud puddle, or a plate of Christmas dinner.  The perfect beginnings of those things tickle me, but once written in, broken through, or bitten into – respectively, they lose their clean, magical awe.

Following the edge of the property, a hill appears to my right.  In no hurry, I march up the hill and the steel grips on the bottom of the shoes hold tight.  Once on top, I see that to continue on my perimeter walk, I need to go down the other side of the hill.  And down looks longer and more challenging than the upward trek had been.  Remembering Bill’s first downhill ski lesson, I called forth his advice: Don’t ski down the mountain.  Ski across it.  Traverse.

I completed a three-point snowshoe turn by planting each foot heavily.  My eyes drew lines like that on a protractor from the point of origin to the arc.  If I made a traverse about ten degrees down the hill from my original path, I wouldn’t make much progress down the incline.  I sighted a thirty degree line that was doable.  Slow, marked steps took this sloth-like winter human down the other side of the hill.  At one of the turns, I had a pang of anxiety that I occasionally have while downhill skiing.  But it was fleeting because I can turn much easier on an incline with grippy snowshoes than I can with slick boards attached to my feet. 

My turn was as tight as that I make at the end of a row of crocheting, where I have to pay attention to which hole I pull that anchoring yarn through – the one that will make for a perfect turn, matching the one before it; that sets me up for gliding, traverse stitches back across the length of a blanket.  In four traverses, I’m at the bottom of the hill standing in a parking lot.  I hear water flowing in front of me and remember that there is a creek along one side of the property.

The juxtaposition of wide frozen chunks hanging over a noisy rippling stream is eye candy to me.  After I absorb it for a couple minutes, I step down to the stream’s frozen edge, tightly hugging the embankment.  I can’t really tell where the creek starts and the land ends.  The hollowness underfoot makes me think that I’m walking on a frozen, perhaps twelve-inch thick, bank of ice.  It’s wide enough that I don’t worry about it breaking; I stay close to the bank’s edge and do not venture out onto the chunk hanging over the mid-stream flowing water. 

I won’t string along the wondering mind; while navigating along a narrow eighteen-inch section of the bank — I fell in. Although it wasn’t so much a fall as an immediate lowering of my body by a few inches when an edge of ice broke under me.  I heard a splash into the six-inch deep water and immediately pulled that foot up, reached for a tree, and pulled my weight off of the crumbling edge.  I scrambled up the bank – a relative term given I was wearing tennis racquets – and was surprised that my feet weren’t soaked.  The loud splash must have been made by the twenty-five-inch long snowshoe quickly dipping into the water. 

Like following huge Hansel and Gretel crumbs, I turned to backtrack my own footprints and went up onto terra firma. Once on solid ground, I looked up and discovered that the most scenic part of this walk was actually at my back where the sun’s winter rays lit the trees and the stream.