I am not a winter person. I like warm sun and sandy beaches and water. I do not like snow and ice and cold. I don’t particularly like falling. And I’m not super coordinated.
It was almost a surprise to myself that I even agreed to take an adult ski lesson at Holiday Valley Resort in Ellicotville, NY.
I had been skiing once before and I thought I didn’t like it. I went into that first time skiing already doubting myself, already feeling like a failure because I was the only one in the group who didn’t know how to ski. They made it look easy and they made me feel like it should be easy for me. I expected it to be easy and it wasn’t. It was uncomfortable and awkward. I was clumsy and heavy and uncoordinated. I was discouraged before I’d even begun. There was no way that day was going to go well. Of course I would come out of that day with more conviction than ever that I was not a skier. I had solidified my identity and I was firmly on the other side of the line. The line between the skiers and the non-skiers. The snow bunnies and the spa-goers.
I think the only thing that made me try again was the fact that everyone I know talks about skiing. There were company ski trips every year, family members who ski, not to mention my husband who skis. It was something I could hardly get away from. If I wasn’t skiing or even talking about skiing, I was left out.
I wrote it down. I put “take a ski lesson” on my list of things I wanted to do at some point in my life, preferably sooner rather than later, before my nerves gave out. I told myself that if I could take a ski lesson then I wouldn’t be held to any standard of being good or having it come easy. It was a lesson; I was supposed to be bad during a lesson. There would be a teacher and there would be other people who would also be terrible skiers.
So my sister and I agreed to do it together. We were in the same shoes- or boots. We’d tried it before, we’d been pushed and rushed, and made to feel inadequate for our lack of slippery slope prowess.
We bundled up and borrowed gear and got in line with the tiny tiny children on the tiny tiny hill that was more like a slightly tilted snow-covered walkway. Our group included 7 other young-ish adults who were also on our side of the skier identity line.
We first learned how to snap our boot into our ski. Helpful. Then we kind of got the feel of just one ski on, while we walked with our other boot in a circle. Also helpful. My biggest issue the first time I’d ever tried skiing was the feeling of the skis themselves. The skis felt big and dumb and awkward on my feet. I couldn’t figure out how to maneuver them.
Granted, during this lesson, the skis still felt big and awkward and I still had trouble maneuvering them, but at least everyone else was having the same problem I was.
This lesson started at the very beginning, which was great! But the instructor didn’t have much patience for people who didn’t know how to ski. Funny, considering he’s teaching a group of complete beginners. In any case, he moved through the skills fairly quickly. We put our second ski on, we tackled marching sideways up the “hill,” and we slid around in a circle putting weight on various parts of our ankles. He kept saying “flex your ankle” but I swear, in those massive ski boots, my ankles weren’t flexing anywhere, so I never really figured out what he meant by that.
We continued wiggling our skis around and bending our knees for about 20 minutes before the instructor clapped his hands and pointed at the magic carpet. We trudged and stumbled in our awkward, single-file line to the moving conveyor belt that would take us up the kiddie hill.
At this point, I was scared of the hill. There were toddlers on this hill. But I still felt like I couldn’t move my skis. I felt like they would get stuck in the snow at the wrong angle and I’d be stuck. I would make it down the hill more or less, with my skis pointed inward in the pizza shape. Slow and steady, but not efficient, and not right. The instructor was not super clear in his instructions on how to get out of my predicament. He kept telling me to flex my ankles and put my weight on one foot a certain way. I couldn’t figure out which way my ankle was supposed to be flexing, because they were still pretty stuck and rigid in those boots, despite my previous attempts at “flexing,” and I couldn’t figure out which foot the weight had to be on to turn in a certain direction. We went up and down that bunny hill about 3 or 4 times with all the tiny tiny children who were taking their toddler lessons. They were freaking adorable.
Then we got out of the training hill and went to the next level bunny hill. Still a magic carpet to get up, but a little higher and a little more steep.
The first time we did this hill, we got off the magic carpet halfway up, so we only did half the hill. Here is where the instructor tried to teach us more about turning. He told us that we need to extend our legs and unbend our knees when we’re turning and then bend them again, as we go across the hill. It did not much make sense to me when he explained it. I was still doing pizza. But I was getting a little more confident going down the hill. I hadn’t fallen yet, so that was a plus.
We went up the magic carpet a second time, all the way to the top. It didn’t feel so steep. Again, we practiced turns. The instructor said that if we could turn both skis all the way sideways, that would stop us, so we wouldn’t always have to do pizza to stop. I was not quite on that level yet.
With the final few minutes we had, the instructor took us up on the ski lift of the beginners hill. He taught us how to get on and off the ski lift without falling. Again, helpful.
Then we went down this big hill. I did pizza a lot, because I was terrified of going too fast. I had about 2% confidence that I would make it down without tripping over my awkward skis and crashing to the ground.
But I made it. And wouldn’t you know, it was actually kind of fun.
The lesson was over, but my sister and I kept at it. The last thing the instructor told us before he went off to teach his next sorry lot of non-skiers was that all we needed to do was get more confident. Easy for him to say, huh.
But we went back up that lift, and skied back down. Up again and back down. Every time I went down I got a little better. My skis got a little straighter. I stopped panicking when I saw another person in front of me because I knew I could calmly and effectively steer myself around them. Somewhere in the past 4 hours, between the bunny hill and the ski lift, I had gained some control. I wasn’t going too fast, but I was going fast enough to have fun. I could stop myself. I could turn. I could look ahead of me, not just straight down at my feet. I think that’s where I saw the real improvement. After I stopped overthinking where my feet and skis were on the ground and just looked up and out, I focused more on the big picture. Where I was going, how I was going to get there, not just the mechanics of the skis. When I realized this, it was eye opening.
As I was going down that hill, the sky dimmed to dusk and the lights on the slopes glowed over the snow, and something inside me warmed and glowed just a bit. I had just conquered this long-held fear, and I lived to tell the tale. I had fallen and gotten back up. I had been down and out and I came back with renewed energy and confidence and strength.
When I was young, I had never even wanted to ski for fear of injuring myself. I cared about other things in my life too much to risk the injury and the recovery time it would take, what it would do to my swimming career.
But in keeping that fear alive, I missed out on this. I missed out on the strength and control I could learn from mastering this coordination on two skinny, slippery pieces of material between my boots and the frozen ground. I let that fear overtake me, until I was no longer just afraid of falling, or afraid of skiing. It became my identity. I am not a skier. I don’t do well on slippery surfaces. That’s not who I am. But it could have been me, if I’d ever tried it.
I can’t say I’m not a skier anymore. But I can say I am the person who will try again. I am the person who will not shy away from something new and hard and scary. I will remind myself that nothing worth doing is easy at first, no one starts out as an expert. They were all on the bunny hill with the tiny tiny children at one point too.