Monday, March 12, Day Two at Taos,
arrives crisp and clear, exactly the kind of morning that prompted
some heart-happy mountain person to turn “bluebird” into an
adjective. Yesterday was a behemoth of sunburned exhaustion and my
body initially rebels at any thought of rolling off the air mattress
and doing it again. But the mind, filled with dizzying ski dreams for
the last eight hours, easily wins this battle. Coffee, ibuprofen, and
eggs with red chile soon have me something close to refreshed, and as
we wind up the cold canyon road to the Ski Valley, I'm irrepressibly
giddy with anticipation.
Once we get off the lift, however,
reality is more painful than peachy. Right off the bat, Sam – my
partner in crime for the week – and his uncle Bill drag my sore and
sunburned ass up into Taos' renowned hike-only terrain. The lift
stops three-quarters of the way up, and if you want the mountain's
steepest, most unique skiing, you must work for it. You must take
your skis off, throw them over your shoulder, and trudge.
I've been skiing for about as long as I
can remember, but this is something entirely new. From a tyke
harnessed to my uncle on the hills of upstate New York to a middle
school daredevil in Vermont to a mediocre high school racer, skiing
had always been about the downhill. The speed, the rush, the risk.
During my college years, I spent summers as a backpacking guide in this same New Mexico high country, learning, as John Muir advised, to “climb the mountains and get their good tidings.” Contact with nature became a central, necessary part of my life, but skiing – done much less frequently now – was an entirely separate endeavor, a vestige of my younger self. I was becoming more Thoreauvian than thrill-seeking. My giant slalom Dynastars sat rusty-edged in the garage at home.
So even when Sam and I realized we
shared the same Spring Break and agreed to spend it skiing, I could
not have predicted this. I'm slogging up through bristlecone pine,
yesterday's pain searing through my legs with each small ski-booted
step, a world away from those have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too days of
chairlift rides and bombing down the groomers at Okemo. Feeling like
a shaggy, lumbering moose, I still manage to smile through gritted
teeth as Sam gingerly waltzes ahead, deer-like in his lightweight
backcountry boots.
The first climb is of course the worst,
and we've soon surfaced onto the Kachina ridgeline. Yesterday morning
was cloudy post-snow, but today we're greeted with the true Rocky
Mountain wake-up call: brightest blue sky, snow-dappled peaks, deep
evergreen groves stretched out in a visual smorgasbord that is really
quite impossible to appreciate all at once. I look north and there
are the Spanish Peaks of Southern Colorado, huge and timeless,
present in a high-definition clarity of blue, gray, and white. Rising
in the east is Wheeler Peak, New Mexico's tallest, towering over the
Ski Valley like the steadiest of guardians. I stood on its
13,161-foot summit on the morning of my 21st birthday, but
there's no room for nostalgia in my brain right now – the present
is, quite literally, too breathtaking.
Yet past experience and emotions are inevitably a part of my time with this landscape, and when Philmont's own Baldy Mountain emerges through the Wheeler saddle, an irrepressible sense of homecoming arrives with it. Unlike yesterday, the entire ridge leading up to Kachina Peak is open for skiers and as we hike on, I hardly notice the lancing pain in my shins or the claymore-like skis digging into my shoulder. Sam has told me that for him skiing out here is as much about the ascent as the descent. It's a new concept for me, but it's suddenly ringing true. As we climb on, my buddy is still way ahead of me; now it's not just the altitude's physical effects, but its spiritual ones too that are causing me to tarry.
It's hard, maybe impossible, to put accurate words to the feelings I experience above treeline, but the ones that keep coming to mind are perspective and awe. Whatever creative force led to these mighty mountains pushing their way skyward and to my insignificant speck of a self being here, with intricate retinas and pupils capable of witnessing them; whatever master catalyst sparked the long, winding chain of events that led to such a moment – I have never felt more connected to that power than when I'm in a high place like this one. Daily concerns wash away in the presence of grand, overwhelming peace, and I feel miniscule yet mighty, fleeting yet full with praise.
Cosmic romances pouring through my
mind, I hardly remember that I'm actually here to ski. But as we stop
partway up the ridge at the precipice to one of the treacherous
“K-chutes,” a whole new kind of flood enters my brain: it's time
for my first real big mountain skiing. Below me is a ten-foot, nearly
vertical drop preceding several hundred feet of descent that seem
nearly as steep, then the frosting as the chute mellows into a
beautiful powder field that extends down to the resort's topmost
groomers.
I watch as Sam and Bill expertly drop
in and link their first carving, poetic turns. There's a second of
hesitation as I realize that in my decade and a half of skiing I've
never done anything as bad-ass as this. I flash through memories of
middle school wipe-outs, of a hellbent ninth-grader waiting for the
start of my JV run down the icy, rutted course, then smile slightly
as the old “fuck it” mentality takes over. I push my poles hard
into the ground, plunge my body forward and drop into the vicious
slope.
***
There will be many more hours of skiing
on this trip. I'll immerse myself in beautiful, challenging glades,
stopping to lean against an aspen in breathless satisfaction every
now and then. We'll hike above treeline a few more times for shorter,
still-exhilarating drops off the ridge. Later in the week, we'll
spend two days exploring crusty, snow-starved Crested Butte Mountain
with a couple of my Philmont buddies. The peaks of Colorado will
tower before us, even more jagged and indomitable than New Mexico's,
but none of the many highs will quite match that second morning at
Taos. Simply put, it was one of the most vital shots of time I can
remember, a barrage of physical, mental, and spiritual stimuli to
which I can find no previous comparison. Because as sublime as that
slow climb up the ridge was, the experience was only partial until
the blurred rush of the descent: the joy of carving a hard turn in
the soft snow then plummeting down into the next one, feeling the
body find its synergistic balance in the struggle to control itself
against the force of the mountain. On the top of the ridge, I stood
speechless in the midst of vast and ancient beauty. At the bottom, my
heart pounded with the thrill of having, for a few minutes, tapped
into that indifferent yet generous power.
Just that morning, not to mention the
rest of the trip, was enough to reignite my love for skiing with the
kind of flames it had once possessed, back when my buddies and I
would watch ski movies all night then sweat all day building a little
jump in one of our backyards. But now there was an added layer to my
boyhood hobby. This was a new, more mature skiing, a pleaser of both
my contemplative and adrenaline-seeking sides. A wholly unexplored
world had suddenly opened its doors, a world as broad, imposing, and
irresistible as the Rockies themselves. All of a sudden I wanted
Alta, Jackson Hole, Whistler. Alaska, for God's sake, and not just
the resorts, but the backcountry too. I wanted miles and miles of
snowy ridgelines to traverse and endless chutes and faces and powder
lines. I wanted the sweaty trudge as much as the heart-stopping
drop-in, for it was all part of this bold, uplifting adventure. I had
thrown my old Dynastars in the car expecting a reunion with that
familiar friend named Skiing, only to find him changed tenfold for
the greater, beckoning me with fat new powder skis to demo and arms
opened wider than ever.
It must have been a similar welcome
that John Muir heard at the top of that Douglas Spruce as he swayed
like a dandelion in the heart of a Yosemite squall. He put it simply
and best: “the mountains are calling and I must go.”
So what was I to do, having heard that
call louder than ever? When Muir discovered the Sierras, he stayed
for good. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think once or twice about
doing the same after this trip. But the world is changed. It's not
1868 and I'm not John Muir. Student loans, car payments, and a
strange budding loyalty to this little place in Texas have sent me
eastward after a week that contained a month's worth of adventure.
And you know what? As sad as it was to leave the mountains in the
rearview, I was okay with it. Okay with pausing my ski dreams after
just an appetizer, okay with those snow-dusted peaks returning to
their role as distant attraction. Because the truth is the best times
are the fleeting ones, the ones you can't have whenever you want. We
so often forget the beauty of something when it becomes everyday.
Perhaps it's best to restrain oneself from some pleasures in order to
preserve their purity. The mountains will still be there this summer.
And next winter. And whenever I find a full-time job closer to them
that's as fulfilling as this one. Until then, I'll smile at the
thought of that perfect bluebird morning.
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| The Silver Bullet in its natural habitat. Crested Butte, CO. |
