Looking out the front window at the Beaver Brook reservation across the street, I can see a large group of kids sledding down our modest hill.  They seem to be having a lot of fun, taking off one after another every few seconds.  This brings to my mind our family’s adventures with downhill skiing.

Having sent our kids to a prep school which included many affluent families, we soon came to realize that they might feel excluded from the mainstream if they did not know how to ski.  Friends’ families owned slopeside condos, for example, and were eager to invite David and Jonny, and sometimes all of us, up to northern New England for ski weekends.

We developed the following plan: we would buy skis and equipment for the kids, and one of  us would also learn to ski so that we could supervise them.  In my twenties and thirties (I had recently turned forty) I had some history with seemingly similar sports, namely roller- and ice-skating, and so I seemed to be the natural choice.  Carol was content to be the snow-bunny mom, cheering from the bottom of the hill and welcoming the skiers with hot cocoa.

We all went to Bob’s Wilderness House in Allston to be fitted for skis, boots, poles, and warm layers of ski clothing.  The price of all of this was quite steep, over $200 apiece for the three of us.  (At this point Jonny was only in third grade, and his skis only reached up to my stomach.)

As luck would have it, Ronnie Sue, a young woman who had worked for us as a nanny, was an excellent skier and had even worked as a ski instructor in Colorado.  She was eager to help us get started.  She was quite familiar with all the local hills, and we packed up our gear and went to our first venues, Prospect Hill in Waltham (which went under a short time afterward), Blue Hill in Canton, Bradford in Haverhill, and Nashoba in Acton.

Everything about downhill skiing was foreign to me.  The boots were so rigid and heavy that wearing them felt like being encased in cement.  Even getting them on was a major struggle.  Once in them, I could not walk without a lot of effort.  Putting my weight on them while skiing created a lot of pressure in my toes, and after one successful run I took off my boots to find that my right big toenail was black and blue.  I went back to Bob’s as I was slowly losing my toenail, and the person who helped me (he was called a pedorothist) said to me “Oh yeah, this happens.  I had the same thing a few years ago.  We just have to make a few adjustments.”  He put little pieces of padding in different places, and my idea of trading away my massive boots went by the boards.

The kids, under Ronnie Sue’s tutelage, took to skiing without a hitch.  At each hill they glided effortlessly, looking quizzically at me as I struggled to just stand up.  I think that Ronnie Sue realized that if she tried to help me that it would take up all her attention and energy, and so she smartly decided to concentrate on the guys.

The kids had their challenges too.  Within a few weeks of their first outing there was a neighborhood racing event at Wachusett Mountain in Westminster.  Despite his inexperience, Ronnie Sue was convinced that David would enjoy competing in these friendly races.  We drove over an hour to Wachusett and David suited up.

The races were held at the bottom of the “bunny slope”, a gentle, friendly slope under normal conditions.  However, the conditions were not normal, but quite icy (i.e. “normal” for New England).  As we watched and waited at the bottom of the hill, we saw skiers coming down quite fast, with a few wipeouts as well.  A PA system was used to announce the skiers and their times.

David’s name was called, and we saw a small figure skiing quite smoothly back and forth down the hill.  As he finished the short course and approached us, we stepped forward to congratulate him, but instead he sailed right past us and skied all the way down to the lodge.  Leaning against the vertical gray shingling, he threw down his poles, removed his skis and his boots, and, as we arrived by his side, said “I’m done.”  As it turns out, David had been terrified the entire way down owing to the speed of the icy surface, and, despite his good race time, had absolutely no desire to repeat the experience.

This incident reminded me of the only previous time I had ever been on skis, about twenty years before.  A group of college choir friends were going up to Killington VT for a ski party and I was invited.  Without a second thought I tagged along (“Oh it’s easy, you’ll like it!”) and rented boots, skis, and poles.  I was not dressed at all for skiing, wearing a tan army shirt and dungarees.

On my first trip up the lift I dropped one of my poles.  I was panicked by this, but at the top a fellow choir member from Colorado named John gave me one of his, and proceeded to ski beautifully down the hill with only one pole.

We were on a huge beginner slope which was called something like ‘The Mill”.  There were hundreds of skiers in the growing darkness.  I launched myself and started to ski down.  Within milliseconds I came to a horrifying realization: I was on solid ice, and accelerating rapidly.  Not knowing what to do, I did the only thing I could think of:  I sat on my rear end and came skidding to a messy stop.

Standing up took me several minutes, but after that I tried again, and learned to my delight that I could ski quite smoothly going down and to my right.  However, I was much more tense and shaky going to my left, and furthermore the transition from one to the other was quite difficult for me because I had no idea how to turn! And so I made my way down the hill, skiing to the right edge of the course, falling on my butt, getting up, struggling to the left edge of the course, and falling again.  I think I actually made two runs down that course, and woke up the next morning with black and blues in all of the predictable places.

Despite this inauspicious exposure, I took up roller skating and then ice skating several years later, and became a decent skater (i.e. I could skate backwards and enjoy it).  Both Carol and I expected that these experiences would translate easily to downhill skiing with our sons.  We turned out to be wrong.

At first I was surprised to learn that a girl who had grown up skiing at Nashoba, a small hill nearby, had become a member of U.S. Olympic team.  I wondered how she could compete with the girls from Colorado or Park City, Utah, with their perfect white powder and plentiful slopes.  After these two experiences, David’s and mine, I realized that skiing in the ice and crusty snow of New England was probably more challenging than skiing on perfect powder, and could form the crucible for an excellent and fearless skier.