Jeepers

I wouldn’t want to live up here on top of this cold, frozen mountain. Although i will admit that while I was sitting up here waiting for my dad, aunt and their cohort in crime to get back on the correct side of the mountain I was struck by a sudden strong urge to burrow underneath that bent over tree. Looked kind of cozy. Although it wasn’t really that cold up there today - nice quasi-spring weather (as in, not quite freezing. Except for when the wind about blew me straight off the ridge).

So anywho, the gist of this post is that I went snowboarding today at Schweitzer with my dad and had a fabulous time. It was sunny, not really windy, and kind of warm, which made for a novel day at the ol’ ski hill (known for it’s amazing sight defying fog that only parts before you in time for you to see the tree you’re about to crash into). Not too long of lines, and tons of snow.

My dad is really considerate and likes to go skiing with me on the few occasions I go each year. Each time i ask “where should we go?” and each time he says “wherever you’d like to, honey, this day is about you”. And he really means it! But his fresh tracks in the powder hunting urge gets the best of him and then…

“Now that you’ve had your warmup run (which today was a black diamond run straight down the face of the south bowl) let’s go up the T-bar on those new runs they put in. They’re nice runs!” and then I say “But Dad! The last time I went on a t-bar i fell off halfway up the hill and had to hike for a quarter mile through trees and brush and deep snow to get to the ski run! It sucked!” I should explain that a little… it’s a bit more challenging to go on a t-bar when you snowboard, because you can’t balance on both feet the way skiers can, and you usually have one foot out of your bindings, and that time I’m refering to was a long time ago and I wasn’t very good yet. But still. Not the easiest thing to do. But my dad says “oh no, this one’s easy, no problem” and it actually wasn’t bad. Made me feel pretty good about myself to try new things and succeed at them. The whole self-improving thing again.

So today. “whatever you want to do honey, I’ll go wherever you want to go.” Uh huh. Halfway up the lift for the first run - we haven’t even been down a hill yet! and Dad says “so you should go out of bounds with your aunt and me today. It’d be great! Get some nice tracks… you could do it! It’d only be a little hike out.” Ha! So I do think about it, but I’m really afraid of running into trees (evil things just jump right out and get you when you least expect it) and while I can go down most any run on the hill as long as it’s wide open, I don’t have a lot of confidence with dodging things (like trees. or slow people. haha. just kidding. they always get out of my way) and it’s a lot harder in deep powder. But I thought about it all morning, trying to build up my enthusiasm and confidence to try it. Dad and I spent some time going down this run with lots of deep chunky snow with a few trees strewn about, and I practiced turning in the powder and going between trees and such, and did all right by the end but not well enough to want to try anything harder. So I copped out of the powder/tree run and sat here on top of the mountain while my dad, aunt, and their friend went. The view was amazing. It’s so rare to be able to see all around the lake and mountains. And it’s really hard to tell in this picture, but from where I was could see the rock slide across the lake from where Mike and I live in Bayview. It made me wish I could jump off the mountain and fly all the way home across the hills. Although not until I got a couple more runs in.

My very meandering point - I’ve been thinking a lot about self-improving stuff (thanks in part to Mike’s amazingness the last couple months in this area) and I think it’s good to try new things, but how do you know when you should or shouldn’t try something? I probably could have gone on that run, and made it down without actually running into a tree and maiming myself, but I didn’t. Because I wanted to be safe, in the physical sense? Or because i wanted to be safe in the sense of not opening myself up to the chance of not being good at something? Maybe I only want to do things if I can be good at them, and right from the start. What do I have to lose though? I might look silly? I might fall down? I might get hurt? I might do ok, but not enjoy it much? It’s hard to say sometimes what is worth the effort of trying. Something to think about.