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Everyone knows, the older you are, the slower bones mend. Yet there I was, old bones and all, skiing with my son who'd just turned sixteen and gotten his driver's license the week before.
The sky had been scrubbed clean by a slow moving weather system that had dumped two feet of powder on Mount Lemmon just north of Tucson. Perfect conditions, and the entire city, it seemed, had turned out to ski.
Jim and I sensibly avoided the mob by schussing the black diamond aptly named Hot Dog. Although steep and challenging, all of Hot Dog lasted barely a minute. After a dozen of these one minute thrills, we decided to try a longer, less challenging slope. As we rounded a blind corner we saw the trail ahead blocked by a human ball. To avoid the pileup, we risked a trip through the woods. I cleared the trees but dropped my guard as I merged onto the slope. Topping a mogul that had blocked my view, I saw, directly in my path, a youngster flat on her back, leg in the air, trying to clamp a loose ski to her boot. My right ski caught under her elevated one. Our skis locked, preventing automatic release and, as my body twisted, I felt a distinct snap at the base of my jawbone. It wasn't my jaw. My tibia had fractured in a spiral from my knee to my ankle.
The young girl was uninjured, but my old bones had to be sledded to the ski patrol shack. It didn't look good. In spite of Tylenol, the pain had become excruciating, so instead of waiting for an ambulance to travel forty miles to fetch me, the last third on icy mountain roads, I was loaded into the back of our car, and my son got to try out his newly acquired driver's license. He'd learned well. He delivered me safely to the hospital before calling his mom to tell her everything had been taken care of.
That night was the most painful I have ever experienced; but like everything in life, it passed. In the days that followed, I got to know my roommate, a slightly older gentleman who was having his final bone replacement after years of incapacitation. He would never be able to ski, he said, but he would be able to walk.
When my full leg cast was reduced to a half cast, my orthopedist asked if I still wanted to ski. As sponsor of our high school ski club I knew that to give up would not be in the best interests of my students, many of whom had worked hard to earn the money for our special trips. So when I answered, "yes," he started me running, slowly building up to five miles a day even while still in a partial cast.
As luck would have it, we had a dry season. We'd already canceled the Thanksgiving and Christmas trips for lack of snow, so when Rodeo Vacation came up in late February, everyone was dying to ski, no matter where. The only decent snow in the Southwest was on Sierra Blanca near Ruidoso, New Mexico.
The mountain was a veritable winter fairyland. On the bus trip up we saw a trio of deer, two does and a magnificent buck, bounding through the freshly fallen snow. When we arrived, we were the only bus in the parking lot.
Mike, a fellow teacher, eyed the Poma lift and said, "You're not going to fool around on the bunny slope, are you?"
I studied it for perhaps a minute, thinking how I really didn't much enjoy awkward Pomas or gentle slopes. I shook my head but deep in my gut something was telling me to play safe.
On the chair ride up, my apprehension increased as we approached the top, but when we reached the unloading platform, the breathtaking view from the crest of eleven thousand foot Sierra Blanca bedazzled me. If this was to be the last run I ever made, it would be worth it.
Pushing off, Mike and I carved back and forth, cautious at first, then gradually picking up speed as we shortened each traverse toward the fall line. Soon we were sailing through a delicious snowy mist, experiencing one of those rare moments of exhilaration unique to perfect powder.
At midpoint we paused to catch our collective breaths. Mike congratulated me on my superb comeback and I felt proud and vindicated I'd taken the risk.
Puffed up and feeling on top of my form at the top of the world, I watched another skier dogging the moguls, taking the steepest fall lines in dizzying descent, pushing the envelope of performance, skis seemingly so close there was only one path in the snow. We both marveled at his skill, grace, and daring; and as he whizzed by, slowing for no one, we saw that he skied on one leg.
Like old wax on skis, the image has stuck in my memory. Here was a person who could have been on crutches or in a wheelchair, yet had chosen instead to be up with the mountain gods, skiing the most difficult of conditions, risking not only one good leg but also his entire being.
Foolhardy? Probably. Still...
Is life without risk really a life? If so, what is to become of us when there are no more risks? We came into this world on the wings of risk, and we survive because of the risks we took to achieve all that is worthwhile.
Even now, a quarter century past that midpoint on the mountain, recalling the young skier brings back the exhilaration of being alive with wind in my face, powder to my knees, caught in the snowstorm of life that we should never shun, even if it means skiing on our last good leg.
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