Deer Valley Revisited - 2014

Choices, choices

Just coming down from a high, skiing at Deer Valley for four days.  At first a little tentative, reeling from last years near death experience on the same mountain. My mind was filled with the imperative that I would not make the same mistake twice – in learning from my reckless hot dogging behavior of last year. And to a certain extent, the strategy worked.  I was proud of myself until the last day.

The sun was shinning, the temperature perfect, and Gary replaced skiing with Gerri’s cautious and steady plodding. His skills more closely resembled my own.  Inexorably, all of that reflection and careful monotonous navigation insidiously capitulated to the thrill of beginning to whizz downhill, after surrendering to the sudden temptation, opening up the throttle on my skis. It overwhelmed me like a virulent flu virus without warning. 

To be sure, the feeling of abandon and release began to manifest itself with the joy of gliding faster and faster, coasting effortlessly on a blanket of soft white snow, tossed aside by the weight and momentum of my skis.  As this freedom and intemperance began formatively to manifest, the day was waning its way toward the end.  We stayed until the last moment before Deer Valley closed its lifts.  Oh, how I wished I had just one more day, just one more day to ski.

Instead, I’m sitting here 35,000 miles above the earth on a big bird, stuffed uncomfortably in coach class, with more pain and aches from crowding my lanky torso in an improbable contortion while typing on my computer than any pain experienced skiing the previous four days. I was, indeed, deprived of the full expression of my hypocrisy in thinking that I was something special, that I had learned from my mistake, that human nature is changeable, that I was able to do the prudent, right and rationale thing, to keep myself safe and healthy. 

Somehow the endorphins released during that last day on the mountain have persisted, drugging me into a visceral euphoria, one that I cannot shake – one that I don’t want to shake.  I will live to face my fallibility some other day; the realization that I’m just as ordinary as the next, unable to control my instincts, just another in the herd of flawed humans who make the same errors over and over and over again. I was lucky this time; there were no adverse effects, no falls, and no injuries.

Still, at least today, I don’t care. I see things differently than yesterday.  Indeed, I am inexplicably comforted by the knowledge that I am not some programmed automaton, that I’m willing to take risks in life, at the price of being totally in control and forever rational.  And I’m still smiling internally and contented, living in the moment, coming off a great day of skiing on Flagstaff Mountain, Deer Valley Ski Resort, Utah.