Recharging

With rain all the way to about 8,000 feet this morning, J-Bo and I pulled into the White Pine parking lot and more or less started laughing at the grimness. It’s not funny – in fact it’s quite sad for us skiers – but the situation begged the question: which is more desperate; the conditions, or us?

Wait a minute, we're back in ski areas? Wasn't that how we spent the first half of this winter? With more low vis on the menu, I couldn't complain.

I guess the answer turned into ‘the conditions,’ as we agreed to move higher into the fog, and J-Bo backed up the Subie. We drove up until there was no more road, which also corresponded with a lack of visibility. Considering the

inauspicious nature of several recent outings – being separately denied and besieged by conditions – I was perfectly happy to stick to some mellow terrain. We headed up to Catherine’s area and threw down laps on smooth cream cheese with a firm base beneath.

Mello Yellow. Or at least mellow white and grey. J-Bo adds a splotch of color.

Easy, fun skiing felt like the perfect remedy to the cerebral ugliness that comprised my last day out. As I told J-Bo, not every detail makes it into musings that sometimes follow a bleak day in the hills, and Tuesday was probably slightly worse in the details than in the retelling. Either way, today’s smooth turns easily brought out that sense of joy that usually accompanies ski turns.

Recharging: it's better than sticking one's finger into a live electrical socket. Pic by J-Bo.

And, with low-consequence terrain beneath our feet, the low visibility wasn’t a big deal. Sometimes it’s nice to peel back the difficulty and just cruise around, carefree as a penguin. For me, today, that was perfect. And like a pair of rechargeable batteries, I already feel like I got plugged in and recharged mentally. Physically? Just need some sleep…

On the drive out, clouds were on the mountains like a headlamp on a helmet.