Part 3: Lost On The Way Home
MindfulMarch Community Story Special
All of this was rattling around in my mind as I began this winter blundering around on cross-country skis. As a former pro snowboarder who has been on the mountains since elementary school, it was a new activity, in very familiar territory. I still have plenty of urges and FOMO that pop up when fresh snow falls and I want to get radical in deep powder.
My intention with cross-country skiing, however, was simply to continue exercising outdoors, safely. But soon enough I found myself eyeing hillsides for the best possible fall lines, taking my definitely-not-telemark gear to the downhill limit. And once that bug caught, I started searching the internet for a setup that would let me make decent turns, but not turn me into a hard-booted telemarker.
Recognizing how far off track I’d gone from that original intention, I started to panic, in search of an explanation for my behavior. Was it a desire to re-create the experiences I had before my injury? If so, I reasoned, why not just go snowboarding again— or better yet splitboarding, both of which are next to walking for me, and would be hypothetically safer than telemarking in terms of not falling down?
I still didn’t know the answer to all this when I skied up Irish Hill, a local mountain that I’d wanted to hike in the summer but still didn’t have the physical muster. The snow was questionable; crusty on the snowshoe-packed trail, and sloppy on the untracked sides. Yet up I went, happy to cross the wooden bridge over a brook whose water babbled through broken-up ice, and climb into the hardwoods— further and further, until I was close to my physical limit, about half-way to the top. I pushed a little more, and found a grove of old-growth birches, massive and white against the stark blue sky. I took off my skis and laid down against a fallen tree, soaking in the silence; that calming feeling that only comes at higher elevations.
I looked up into the leafless canopy and cried for joy. I was home. I was in the mountains, in the place that had given me so much for so long. I felt my urges to “figure it all out” fall away, like snow sloughing off branches warmed by the sun, and realized it didn’t matter how I got down. Learning how to turn or finding the best ski setup didn’t matter. What mattered was simply being up there, in that magical place, at that moment. The joy of being in the woods, high in the mountains was as old as anything I can remember— how I got there, and how I got back down, were totally new.
There had been plenty of other subtler steps, but this day really felt like the beginning of living my meditation practice, and revising how I viewed what is possible post-injury. Check back next week to see how I plan to live this new perspective.
Jesse Huffman is a freelance writer and video producer based in Vermont.
@manhuff | http://www.jessehuffman.com