News from Jules | 03.06.2023 | You (Still) Got This, Girl

When we agreed to head up to the mountain together last Wednesday on what turned into the most epic bluebird day—and midweek to (ski)boot with a handful of other lucky souls also getting front-row parking beside the slopes—neither of us knew what we were getting into.

The sky an electric blue through our polarized ski goggles, the warmth of the sun reflecting off our Zinc-coated noses, the fresh snow solid, but soft, like clumpy powdered sugar, the same color as the fluffy cotton ball clouds a thousand feet below us covering the entire base of the mountain.

“One of the best powder days I’ve ever had,” a climbing teammate texted from the other side of the mountain later that afternoon.

This is exactly what it feels like saying “hell yes!” when the Universe offers an opportunity.

The last time I had skied we did two, maybe three, runs before stopping at the warming hut for beers—for 15 years.

Did I still know how to ski? Who knows?

I have been itching to try skiing again since I started mountaineering in 2021.

Looking down the steep slopes near the top of Mt. Hood and watching other climbers quickly ski down in 30 minutes what would take us hours to descend, I realized part of what made climbing feel so familiar, so natural wasn’t just “beginner’s luck,” but spending almost every winter weekend in middle and high school skiing on Mt. Hood and nearby mountains.

I went “all in” and lived that season of life to the fullest, then filed it away and forgot all about it. Until it resurfaced as an itch, as a desire, as an intention, as an invitation.

I was already gliding across the sparkly white snow when I blurted out, “Wait, how do I stop?” and I simultaneously felt my legs come together, my hips shift to the right and my body swivel to the left into a crisp 90°hockey stop.

“Uhhh, just like that,” chuckled my friend, a ski instructor, Timberline Ski Patroller, and gracious hand-holder caravaning with me to the mountain, adjusting my boots at the rental shop, bringing bags of loaner gear, hooking us up with free ski tickets and rubbing her confidence off on me.

Paying it forward, just like her mentors did when she learned to ski eight years ago, at 47 years old.

A few days before I had read Melissa Kirsch’s inspiring account, “Getting Back on Skis” in The New York Times: “Returning to a once-rewarding, now-abandoned activity is humbling, and, the older we get, increasingly rare…What people had told me about ‘muscle memory’ appeared to be accurate,” she wrote.

Clearly, it was in fact like “riding a bike.”

“Well shoot, I don’t need to teach you. Let’s get you off this “bunny” slope and into some real action,” my friend chuckled and I readily followed.

Just like when I was 11 years old in my first season of skiing and followed my older siblings and their friends to the ungroomed, out-of-bounds—ahem, single or double black diamond—runs where there’s no going back once you get off that lift just a whole lot of swearing on the way down.

Once again, I felt naïve, trusting, fearless.

My lapse in memory renewed a “beginner’s mind” or the attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions that Zen Buddhists’ aspire to. I didn’t know what I couldn’t do, so we tried everything.

Turn after turn cruising down the Magic Mile’s 1,000 feet of elevation in mere minutes, I was amazed at how capable I was. My instincts took over and my mind was along for the ride. I was both an expert and a beginner.

I read the curves of the snow like I learned to read the green playing golf in high school, I fully shifted my weight from side to side like I learned balancing yoga poses after college, I sunk deeply into my turns like I learned to propel myself up a rock face last year.

It wasn’t just that my body knew how to ski. But I had learned how to be in my body. I am learning how to be in my body. The beautifully transferable and cummulative process of living and learning.

We paused at the top of a run that we had passed by earlier called “Mustang Sally,” a steep-ish black diamond full of bumpy moguls, and quickly decided to just go for it. Why not?

I led the way this time.

After my first couple of moguls, I remembered: how much harder it is and how much scarier it is, and how thrilling it is—there’s turning and jumping and speed all at the same time.

The first tinge of fear crept into my mind. I quickly reminded myself: I am bold. I am decisive. And I really like speed.

You still got this, girl.

Instead of dropping the F-bomb, I chanted to myself: Bold. Bold. Bold. with every turn until I slid into the ski lift line beside my friend with a huge smile on my face. We had definitely earned a fancy hot chocolate in the lodge after that!

“What I felt was gut rapture. The fleeting certainty that I deserved the space I’d been taking up on this earth, and all the air I had breathed,” wrote Barbara Kingsolver in one of her short stories from Homeland and Other Stories.

That day was that same peak experience as climbing my first mountain: to feel so full of oneself, like a balloon fully expanded, from this place of deep knowing, or perhaps more truly, deep being.

I was blissfully tired and alert that afternoon as I drove three hours from Mt. Hood over to my new housesitting gig near the small town of Sisters in Central Oregon that sunny, epic bluebird day. I saw the dream transforming from getting to the top to also getting to the bottom.

What if I could summit and ski down Mt. Hood this year?

How amazing would that feel?

May you relearn what you already are this week.

Love,

Jules