As if my heart skipped a beat. And in that beat, I was flying. I completely forgot where I was and what I was doing because remembering would be thinking and there were no thoughts. Nor feelings or any sensations.
There was nothing.
A weightlessness filled with nothing, like the hollow-boned hawks that glided around the mountain.
As close to Oneness as I’ve known.
In the next instant, my eyes blinked beneath my goggles and I snapped out of it. I once again felt the chilly wind brush past my exposed nose and chin. My left pole touched a point ahead of me at the same time as my legs sunk deeper into my ski boots, my pelvis swung to the right, and the freshly waxed edges of my skis sliced through the dry snow.
I felt my heart beat faster as the snow-laden trees raced past and the groomed trail turned sharply to the right. Coming around the corner, I saw the brown pants and black coat of my REI coworker and newest ski buddy far ahead just before he swerved left around the next corner. I pointed my skis straight ahead to try and catch up with him.
The tops of my thighs throbbed with the extra exertion and the thoughts returned in rapid fire: Whoa this is fast. Too fast? I dunno. Oh my gosh, I’m so tired. Why am I still skiing? Can I finish this?
And of course, “You got this, girl.”
It was my first black diamond run of the season after a handful of ski days ranging from bad, painful, and no fun to cold and wet but enjoyable, and now to awesome, thrilling and so much fun!
Unlike the shorter, easier runs we’d skied all day alongside a random squad of coworkers from Mt. Bachelor and REI, this trail seemingly went on forever as it dipped down steep sides of the mountain that overlooked the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway and weaved through the thick forest, hence being a more difficult run at the far end of the scale—from easy (green circle) to intermediate (blue square) to hard (black diamond) runs.
Finally, I cruised into a sharp “hockey stop” spraying my buddy as I landed right next to him at the bottom of the lift. Our bright white smiles confirmed that was definitely the best run of the day and even though we were pooped, it was totally worth it.
Two months into a disappointing but predictably mild, albeit extra temperamental El Niño and climate change compounded winter, it was my best ski day yet.
Especially that one moment. The one or two seconds out of some 50,000 seconds, or 14 hours on the slopes during my seven days of skiing so far, reminded me why I do the other 49,999 seconds.
That rush.
It made everything totally worth it.
See fun photos of skiing at Mt. Bachelor on Instagram.
Whatever you want to call it: A runner’s high, peak performance, or being “in the zone”—that ironically embodied yet “out of body” experience associated with athletes, musicians, artists, scientists, yogis, and so on.
Yes, it often arises from cumulative skill, concentration, and repetition, based on challenges, vulnerability, and resilience, born in solitude and camaraderie. When all that capability meets natural physiological and personality traits, flow becomes inevitable.
According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a pioneering University of Chicago psychologist and author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
In my case, having ridden in my parent’s backpack until I was big enough to keep up with the family on my own wooden skis, followed by years of downhill ski school and ski bus every weekend during middle and high school, plus family ski trips each winter, combined with quick reflexes, decisiveness and a serious need for speed, enable this flow.
That exhilarating whole-self experience where my intuition, senses, and environment are all attuned, channeling creativity and confidence.
But, it was more than that.
It was so much bigger than my whole self. As close to Oneness as I’ve known.
When I tapped into the flow.
So deeply present, so deeply connected that my intuition was no longer restrained to my consciousness. I wasn’t aware of my surroundings. I was them.
As if I was one of the trillion unique snowflakes that twirled through the chilled air, coasting on the same currents as the birds of prey spying for rabbit prints, while making its way down from the clouds high above; that dressed the tree boughs like arms of a heavy, white puffy coat; that made up the deep base layer of snow blanketing the fallow earth.
As if I was made of the same atoms as everything—including any one of the eight billion unique snowflakes of a human being on this planet.
This Oneness.
What a rush.
May you notice that one moment this week.
Love,
Jules