(This post will be quick. I’ll post more about my skiing adventures some other time, but since my time in Montana is almost at an end, and it appears I am actually connecting to the Wi-Fi in my room, I want to take advantage and post this before my luck runs out. Yesterday I had to sit in the lobby at 6:00 a.m. with other Wi-Fi orphans):

The first time I went skiing with my late husband, he took me right to the top of a black diamond. I hadn’t skied since college, so I was rusty. And nervous. Much to his delight I had just fallen trying to get off the ski lift, so my confidence was already shot.

When we got to the top, and I looked down into the gaping snow maw of death, I shook my head and backed up. “No way,” I said. The relationship was new, and I didn’t want to appear like a diva, but it was really steep. “I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can,” he answered.

I laughed. “How? How in the world do you suggest I get to the bottom of this mountain?”

He adjusted his goggles. “Point your skis downhill. And try not to get yourself killed.”

Sage advice. I’ll spare you maudlin ski metaphors, but sage advice for life, too.

I fell a lot that day, and many days after that. And through the years skiing has handed me busted knees, dislocated thumbs, and thunks to my noggin. But after forty exciting years, my skiing career can finally be summed up in one word:

Competent. I’m a competent skier. I’m not fast, or fancy, or daring. I don’t have bright expensive outfits or flashy equipment. I don’t feel compelled to visit the big commercialized brag-worthy ski mountains that boast high-end apres-ski villages

What I do have is awe. Awe that I live in a world that has such a thing as skiing. That I can click my boots into my light blue Rossignols, take a chairlift to get above that tree line and then let gravity propel me downhill as I easily move through the snow.

I’ve skied in a lot of different places through the years, even out of country, and I have a lot of great stories. But my time at this little ski mountain this week reminded me why I began skiing in the first place.

Nature. Simplicity. Quiet. Solitude.

And we’re off for some more.