It was a brilliant bluebird day at Snowbird last February. I was in the lead and my friend Liana and her then-5-year-old son were following as we traversed just below the summit. Little Theo, or Skio, as I like to call him, has been skiing since he could walk and couldn’t wait to show us his moves in the bumps.
I dropped into Regulator Johnson and quickly skied down about 500 feet so I could watch the little grom, pole-less and fearlessly wedging through moguls as high as his bright red helmet. He was going fast, a little too fast I thought, showing off for us. He took air off one of the bumps and suddenly began plummeting down the mountain. I stood helplessly below, his tiny body catching more and more speed as he fell. Liana was right behind him, frantically trying to outpace him and finally arcing one huge turn around him, throwing her body on the ground in front of him: a human brake. Thankfully, Skio was unhurt. Just really scared and upset. Liana held him in her arms until he calmed down. He stood up and skied the rest of the run like a champ.
It’s moments like these that make me think there is a special place in heaven for ski mothers and fathers. It takes almost superhuman powers to keep all your own gear straight, let alone that of two or three tiny and uncooperative people. Locating the missing glove, making sure everyone has their passes, packing the bag with snacks, schlepping the skis and poles and boots and helmets. The forsaken dreams of 18 inches of fresh overnight melting down as hard as your 4-year-old in the back seat. And all that before you even leave the driveway.
I don’t have kids myself, but I was one of those kids. And as an adult, I can really appreciate the maneuvers that went into getting 6-year-old me upright in my older brother Mike’s hand-me-down skis. I didn’t much like skiing back then. Which is to say I hated it. I would rather sit by the big fireplace in the lodge, surrounded by my books and Barbies.
I’m looking at a photograph taken at the bottom of the main run at Hunt Hollow Ski Club in Naples, New York, where I learned to ski. My mom and brother are in the foreground. My mother is radiant in a knit headband, frosted pink lipstick, tight tan stirrup pants and a pair of Jackie-O sunglasses. My brother, who took to the sport like a miniature Stein Erickson, has on navy ski pants with a yellow racing stripe. They’re both beaming at the camera, oblivous to the shadowy, dwarfen figure behind them. Head down, chin-high poles, a ski pass dangling from the oversized black knit cap, struggling to get a boot into the binding. That would be me.
Every time I watch a parent hauling a kid onto the chairlift it triggers the memory of my very first chairlift ride. As the chair approached, my mother grabbed me under my arms from behind and tried to shove my butt onto the seat. Only the lift came in too fast and she dropped me. I pitched forward and the lift hit me in the head. I was okay and actually happy to retreat to my picnic bench and hot cocoa in the lodge. And that might’ve been the end of my ski career, except for my mother’s best friend Stephanie giving me one of her glamorous Sarah Coventry necklaces as a bribe to try again.
I eventually grew to love the sport at about age 10. As I excitedly noted in my diary at the time, “Today I learned how to ski parrelell (sic)!!! Peter Trier (an instructor at Hunt Hollow), showed me how to do it!!! I think Peter is really handsome!!!” This was in the days when, besides falling in love with your ski instructor, you either snowplowed or skied parallel; there was no such thing as “pizza and french fries.”
Kid’s ski safety was different then, too—and definitely a bit of an oxymoron. My Park City ski buddy Nikki grew up in a ski-in, ski-out resort in Australia called Falls Creek. She learned to love the sport before she could even walk. “When dad had a lunch break, he’d come home and put me in a front-facing carrier strapped to his chest and take me for a party lap on the home run. He said I loved it and giggled the whole time.”
Say what you will about parents who put their kids in potentially risky situations. Hey, my mom dropped me. But this is a judgement-free zone. Because these parents, ski parents, all they really want to do is pass on their love of the mountains and of friendships counted in seasons. Their understanding of the frigid air and snowflakes falling on rosy cheeks. Their Chumbawumba knowledge of what it takes to fall down and get back up again. And the unadulterated joy of skiing. It is a pure and unselfish act. And one I thank my parents for every day that I’m lucky enough to stand on a pair of wooden planks in the fresh, white snow.
Last weekend, I met Liana and Skio at Deer Valley for our first ski together this season. Wearing a black-and-white camo jacket with a neon orange zipper and sporting a mullet, the mini-ripperton was now skiing with poles and leading the way through the Enchanted Forest. There was Skio, his plush moose backpack bobbing up and down as he flew over the whoop-dee-dos, greeting each of the wooden cut-out trail animals with a tap of his pole. The three of us reached the end of the trail and popped out onto the cat track to snap a pic. Skio smiled, stuck out his pole and clicked Liana’s and mine as he pushed off into the sparkling snow. “Hurry up you guys, let’s do it again!”