Frisco

You know how you have a dream in your thirties … a dream about having more freedom to do the things you love … well one of OUR dreams has always been to live in ski country for a season. We would be free to only go out on sunny days .. rest when we were tired ... and really get GOOD as a skier.

Well IF that dream is to be fulfilled, then it better begin this season. So that is why I am writing this from Summit County Colorado. We have rented a condo in Frisco for the month of February and are in the beginning stages of the 2009 ski-a-thon.

In trying to think of an angle for this journal I realized that one thing that I do LOTS in life and maybe even more on ski trips is look ahead to the NEXT day … the NEXT run … instead of being in the moment . So I thought it might be good to take as my focus the Zen of such an experience. Perhaps this will be as boring as slush. But I think by reflecting on the times when it is easy and the times when it is hard to be in the moment, I might … well do just that reflect on that and what it teaches. William Least Heat Moon on skis?

So let’s place us in time and space … we are in a little one bedroom condo about 8 blocks from Main Street in Frisco. We have a season’s pass to 5 areas Breckenridge, A-Basin, Keystone, Vail and Beaver Creek. We started out yesterday at Breck which has a reputation as an intermediate mountain … good place to warm up on. It was on the way to the parking lot that I first caught myself thinking “God, we have been on the move since 7:45 yesterday morning and I STILL haven’t taken a run … can’t we hurry up and get there?”

Then I looked out at the peaks that make the Breckenridge ridge and realized THAT was something I should be savoring. It was then that I came up with this way of thinking about the trip. And since I am only a beginner at such things … since not EVERY moment is one I live in fully… here is a rundown of the few things I really did savor as they were happening yesterday.

#1 the first run … it was sunny ... the snow was perfect … the pitch of the slope allowed me to get right into my rhythm … and my K2 Apache demo skis … were making me look LOTS better than I am.

#2 the conversation on the lift with a woman from Annapolis who was a gardener and a painter … my age … and only 4 months out of knee replacement surgery.

#3 taking a hot shower when I got home and just feeling the HOT seep into my bones

#4 my first sip of “medicinal” scotch before dinner

Sadly the rest of the day was about tired legs, losing my breath because of the altitude and thinking NOT about this moment but rather about how much better this will all feel in 2 weeks.