When asked to discuss my cross-country skiing experience, I was forced to confess that the entirety of my experience consisted of putting on multiple pairs of socks, stuffing the resulting large, lumpy appendages into Dad-sized shoes with three little spikes in the toes, attaching them to c. 1972 skis that my dad picked up at a garage sale, and tromping around our neighborhood in the Mitten. I would hardly call it experience. AN experience, maybe, but not really experience.
Undeterred (SHO did say that it was okay for beginners), I rented cross-country skis and joined a crowd of people heading up into the mountains.
People. Cross-country skiing is awesome.
Okay, I fell four times in four miles. The first time I fell directly forward, landing on my elbows straight in front of my skis, and I laughed, because who falls that way? That's how little kids fall on downhill skis, and you can't believe they can contort themselves like that.
The two middle times I just fell sideways.
The fourth time, I clothes-lined my backpack on the gate to the road we were skiing on. I bent down to ski under it, and I caught my backpack and fell. That one made me laugh, too.
But in-between were quiet woods and swish-swish-swishing. I skied much of the two miles in by myself, and there is something about snow and silence and spaces between the trees that made me much less nervous to be alone than I would be in the summer. I liked it, in fact, where normally I am afraid of what might be in the woods. (I would still never - shudder - go cross-country skiing alone in the middle of the woods. I needed the others just around the bend before and behind.)
On the way back, I talked with friends, and that was lovely, too. It's like hiking, all the good things about hiking: the nature, the strange (code word: interesting) people, the conversations, the being outside, but you can do it in the winter! It's %*#& brilliant.
Undeterred (SHO did say that it was okay for beginners), I rented cross-country skis and joined a crowd of people heading up into the mountains.
People. Cross-country skiing is awesome.
Okay, I fell four times in four miles. The first time I fell directly forward, landing on my elbows straight in front of my skis, and I laughed, because who falls that way? That's how little kids fall on downhill skis, and you can't believe they can contort themselves like that.
The two middle times I just fell sideways.
The fourth time, I clothes-lined my backpack on the gate to the road we were skiing on. I bent down to ski under it, and I caught my backpack and fell. That one made me laugh, too.
But in-between were quiet woods and swish-swish-swishing. I skied much of the two miles in by myself, and there is something about snow and silence and spaces between the trees that made me much less nervous to be alone than I would be in the summer. I liked it, in fact, where normally I am afraid of what might be in the woods. (I would still never - shudder - go cross-country skiing alone in the middle of the woods. I needed the others just around the bend before and behind.)
On the way back, I talked with friends, and that was lovely, too. It's like hiking, all the good things about hiking: the nature, the strange (code word: interesting) people, the conversations, the being outside, but you can do it in the winter! It's %*#& brilliant.
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