 “ACCIDENTAL ZEN AT PURGATORY”© Copyright 12-06-2006 By Dana Shino, The Purple Phoenix, LLC www.thepurplephoenix.com I haven’t skied in about a decade... this should have been my first clue. I moved to Durango, Colorado from the Colorado Front Range in early summer 2006. The nearest ski resort was only 20 minutes away. So, in the Fall, I impetuously purchased ski equipment, clothing, and a week-day ski pass. How could I live so close to four ski areas (Telluride, Wolf Creek Pass, Silverton and Durango Mountain Resort), and NOT ski? As my first ski day crept closer, I wondered what had I been thinking? I remembered bleary-eyed 4:30 a.m. winter ski mornings with my family. I remembered three hour drives ending with the crazy rat race up I70 to the ski slopes above Denver. I remembered the c-c-c-cold and wet. I remembered struggling with ill-fitting rented ski equipment and clothing, the crowds and the lift lines. Most of all, I remembered fear at the top of a slope: my feet strapped on two long, skinny, slick boards pointed downhill. Why did I buy that ski pass? Inevitably, ski morning dawned and I was too proud to back out (too monetarily invested) and too grouchy to enjoy a significant adventure. It was like PMS without the period. I regretfully removed myself from between warm covers and sleeping kitties to meet my Special Guy Friend at 8 a.m. Bob’s snowboarding enthusiasm regarding ski day had ever increased inversely to my dismal attitude. (I secretly suspected this did not bode well for Bob). Somehow, between breakfast and meeting Bob, I grasped a significant detail... my ski clothing was not the Michelin Tire Man’s inept layers Ralph’s little brother in “A Christmas Story” fought. No. Miraculously, between the 1990’s and now, outdoor and ski clothing had become considerably lighter, warmer, more comfortable and well designed. I relaxed. A smidge. Bob met me with the unabated joy a golden retriever displays fetching an unending number of sticks from water. His snowboarding anticipation humbled me into mustering a sorry excuse of mock enthusiasm. We loaded our equipment in the back of his truck, but not before I noticed how green and sleek his board was, and how hip he looked in boarder clothing. “Hmm,” I smirked to myself, “at least I get to watch him zip down the slopes.” My ski thermometer thawed to just above the ‘frigid’ mark. Marguerite, the name Bob dubbed his truck, neatly hummed us to the front door step of Durango Mountain Resort, otherwise known as Purgatory, its old name. Along the way, we couldn’t have asked for a bluer, crisper, clearer sky, a brighter sun, more spectacular scenery or less traffic. My lungs opened more easily and I breathed. “How could I be an ingrate in the company of this magnificence?” I thought. When Bob put Marguerite into a parking slot, it seemed impossible: the parking lot was nearly empty. This meant the slopes would be empty. Bob and I bubbled at the thought. This, it occurred to me, was a tangible perk to self employment and skiing on a Monday. It brought new meaning to ‘board meetings.’ Between leaving my morning bed and arriving at the mountain, one barrier after another dissolved. I felt lucky. An unmistakable burble of anticipation hatched somewhere between my heart and stomach. I unlatched Marguerite’s door, stepped around to her tailgate and peered at my ski equipment. The burble froze. I heard Michael Buffer’s voice in my head yell, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” I’d forgotten about my ritual wrestling dance with ski equipment. It’s easily mistaken for a colorful bird’s mating dance, complete with squawking, jumping and off-balance pirouetting. I commenced and for the first time that morning, Bob looked worried. He didn’t have to say a word. I know he was seriously considering escaping entrapment with a dangerous woman. I reassured him this was normal as I unsuccessfully jammed my foot into a ski boot. Then I realized, “duh,” I hadn’t completely opened the clips and bindings. Once I did, as well as push back the boot’s tongue, my foot slipped in like Cinderella’s into her glass slipper. Then I felt it. My foot fit more snugly and comfortably in my boot, than in most of my shoes. “Hello, Cinderella,” I said, technology really has come a long way. We gathered the details and started for the ski slopes. Cellular memory’s red carpet rolled out elegantly in front of me as I took, for the first time in years, my first few ski-booted steps. Once again, I felt like a nymph shackled to rigid elephant shoes, assuming the awkwardly embarrassing macho-ski boot strut. Waddling penguins and ducks are more graceful than humans in ski boots (not to insult the ducks and penguins). Yet, ski-booted humans aren’t a menace until they’ve slung a set of skis over their shoulder while holding poles in the other hand. Here, amusing and awkward crosses into dangerous windmill action. (I’d already almost knocked Bob in the head, twice.) Add ice or slick snow pack to ski-booted waddling and precariously balanced skis and you have the human version of outdoor bowling. Everyone is a potential walking bowling ball pin, prime for ass-falling. The key is not to let anyone else take you out on their way down. Bob and I geared up near the lift lines. I was already exhausted from my windmill, elephant walk from the truck and we hadn’t even started. (I wondered, why do humans like to pay so much money and work so hard to let gravity pull them down a mountain?) Bob and I tied laces, zipped zippers, locked boots into skis, latched buckles, squirreled away snacks and cinched Velcro. We were certifiably strapped in. I couldn’t back out now. I felt my anxiety meter creep up inside my chest. We cued briefly in the lift line and when it was our turn, I ungracefully ski shuffled towards the red line, the standing point designated for the chair to lift you up and away. Half way there, I began sliding back as the chair lift curled around to us. The more I tried to shuffle and swim in the air, the more I slid backwards. Bob couldn’t reach me. I froze. The chair kept coming. Did I really want to get to the top of the mountain? At the last moment, a ski attendant pulled me forward and chastised me for not using my poles. Then, SHWOOSH, the chair effortlessly scooped us up and I momentarily felt like a child whisked singularly, pod-like, to the moon and stars for the first time. The sensation of awkwardness, ungainliness dissolved into silent ease. In less effort than breathing, snow covered pines, the ski slope and the occasional skier slipped by underneath us. Bob and I floated through a beautifully muted, suspended winter land. My senses sharpened ten fold. I felt the air in my lungs. My gratitude breached their walls for the green pine, white snow, blue sky, mountain pitch and crisp breeze. I was alive! It was a salient moment... until I spotted the end of the line. It was the point where the chair lift ungraciously dumps you, whether you want to be dumped or not. Well, that’s not entirely true. If you want to suffer the embarrassment of a ride down the mountain, you can. But it’s not advisable. We lifted the security bar, poised and paused as the ground rose to meet us. I pushed off. I held my breath, but my body remembered how to glide downward over snow. I stopped and paused as Bob cinched his feet in his snowboard bindings. The near sensation of skiing and the leakage of old ski memories simmered with one another, rubbing against my exhilaration and fear. It didn’t seem real: there I was, standing in boots, on skis, at the top of a mountain with my friend. Bob stood up and inched forward with his board until gravity pulled him down the slope and he was gone. I tentatively followed down the gentle slope and felt my new ski blades cut over and through ga-jillions of snow crystals. I secretly smiled to myself as I felt myself flow over the snow, then test a turn. It worked. The fragile mountain ski flower began opening in me. Bob graciously and patiently paced with me over the next several ski runs as the skeleton of physical ski memory first pieced itself together and then flooded through me. I remembered the consistency of snow and how to turn in it, lifting my back ski. I remembered the dance of balance down the mountainside, as your legs, hips, torso and poles clicked out a rhythm. I remembered in brief moments exquisitely freedom flying. My perceived ski barriers were dissolving, one after another, yet fear still hinged to me when I paused at the tops of the steeper slopes. The physical ski memories awakening in me, though exhilarating, were also disturbing a memory layer buried far more deeply. The ghost of my younger self crept to me, reminding me of my inadequacies, limitations, anxieties, fears and need to control. She reminded me how closed my life had been—how rigidly and tightly I had lived. So, I skied the steeper slopes the old way: clutching with control, gritting my teeth against the steeper pitches, fighting the mountain and inflexibly struggling while a thin layer of anxiety laden plastic wrap slowly squeezed and asphyxiated my lungs and heart. My present-day, spiritually wiser self, knew better, knew different. She was the one who had extricated herself from a toxic marriage, a toxic job and a geographical region laden with personal histories she had outgrown. My present-day self had made a gutsy move to a town where she didn’t know a soul and hadn’t left much of a forwarding address behind her. My present-day self was the one who impetuously dreamed on a sunny, blue-sky fall day about skiing again. This day, on top of a Colorado mountain, my two selves were simultaneously standing in one pair of ski boots... something had to give. It happened in ski run number four. Half way down the mountain, inside of a nice ski rhythm, I felt it kick loose. My old concrete emotional scaffolding, what I had carried for years, collapsed bit-by-bit and rolled away like a disintegrating house of cards. I released it in a joyful surprise of multi-colored streamers, splaying out and littering the snow behind me as I flew past pine after pine. I felt substantially lighter. I breathed. Then, I was skiing a magical dream. Only a ski run before, I was fearfully fighting the mountain’s jagged edges. Now, it rose up and embraced me, held me. When I leaned in to it, the mountain said, “Trust me.” So I did. I received new rhythms. The slopes breathed, rising and sinking and rising again in magnificent flow, magnificent speed. Edges curved. I flew. Trees gyrated. For once, I breathed the mountain’s wisdom, the gift of experiencing oneness... ...the gift of a little accidental zen.  Your contributions help support The Purple Phoenix Press.
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