Julia, embodying post-fall joy. Note the trucker's hat and aviators. Just 'cause we're in the mountains doesn't mean we can't look good, right?
…He’d ski Red Coon Glades after a long sunny stretch. Because, as wise ski bums say, “Anyone can be happy on a powder day…it takes a real skier to smile in the crud.” And I’ll tell you what; Red Coon after a long sunny stretch is the real crud.
A couple weeks ago Julia and I got a less than early start toward the south-facing Red Coon Glades on Mt. Emmons (aka The Red Lady), which was sub-optimal, seeing as how she had to work at noon and all. But, we figured the Red Lady would be our best bang for the buck: climb straight out of the parking lot, and ski right back, sans approach slog. Plus, I figured the skiing would be mighty fine: last time I was there the snow was so deep I was poling hard to make it down 27-degree slopes, so I hoped that the sunny spell after the storm would firm up the powder and give us some play. Plus, the glades, like the January sun, are so low angle, they wouldn’t get so much sun that they’d crust over.
Wrong.
The powder firmed up, all right: firmed up into a 5 cm death crust with sugary swag snow below. As we broke trail, we let out our inner sailors: “What the [frisky kitten]!?, this is going to suck! Son of a [blow fish]! Here comes face plant city!” But, not only do sailors curse well, they also weather the storm and sail whichever way the wind blows, so we kept ‘er at full mast, and headed on up.
Eleven o’clock rolled around sooner that we expected, so about three-quarters of the way to our destination (Red Coon Glades) we grabbed a snack and stripped skins. Julia traded her cool-is-the-new-awesome trucker hat and aviators for a beanie and goggles, and then swapped back because, let’s face it, a trucker’s hat and aviators are the tool of choice when it comes to gettin’ ‘er done. We decided to stick to the trees to find the soft, shady pockets of snow. The philosophy was a sound one, as sound as Hayduke’s treatise on the relationship between beer cans and road ways, and similarly not without it’s flaws. The major flaw being: shady pow pockets, while rewarding, offer a false sense of security, a security that is quickly full-nelson body-slammed by the next crusty sun shot.
Skinny pants, wide skis. Living the dream. That's me, back seat crust cruising.
I headed down first, sitting heavy in the back seat, never daring to drop my knee, and feeling like a silly rookie for choosing a south face after such a sunny spell. I made some survival turns, and looked back to see Julia cart wheeling and caterwauling through the aspens. She tumbled to a stop a few meters above me, and lay still. I braced myself for cries of pain. Instead, she slowly rolled her smiling face my way, lay back in the snow, and laughed out loud. After that, our moods lightened and we took on every turn as a great cosmic joke – like somewhere Ra and Ullr are high-fiving and fist pumping like Saints fans at the Superbowl at our expense. May as well laugh with them, right?
So, if that intro paragraph sounded a little new-agey to you, I’ll come clean. I’m reading a self help book. As I mentioned last blog, the ol’ blood-pumper is a little bruised up (read: lady troubles), and my infinitely wise mother sent me If The Buddha Dated by Charlotte Kasl (along with some cookies and a sack of potatoes – now that’s unconditional love, right there. Thanks, Mom!). Long story short, if the Buddha dated, he’d not be attached to outcomes, he’d accept reality objectively and with love, and he’d make suffering his friend.
Now, if you hang in the adventure realm long enough, suffering becomes a well-known companion (soggy sleeping bags, red-hot blisters, screaming foot jams, etc.). Fight it, and we suffer more. Befriend it (you know, like on Facebook) and it makes us stronger. As Oriah Mountain Dreamer asks in “The Invitation:” “…I want to know / if you can sit with pain / mine or your own / without moving to hide it / or fade it / or fix it.” I wonder, can I? Skiing nasty sun crusts seems like a good place to start.
Julia, gettin' hers.
It’s a hard thing to reckon: Big time adventuring takes drive, goals, and struggle, so what place does a philosophy of surrender and acceptance have? Steph Davis, a very accomplished and driven climber, explored this theme in her book, High Infatuation: “I recognized the conflict between my spiritual philosophies [of go with the flow] and my personal ethic of hard work and determination,” she writes. In High Infatuation, Steph seems to surrender to the paradox – to climb for the love of climbing “simply and joyfully,” is enough; “my way to love this world,” she writes. I’ll take it another direction here, and say that I find that surrender and acceptance don’t presuppose passivity. We can accept our drive to summit a peak; we can surrender to our desire to be the first to ski a particular line. But we also have to yield to our limitations and the reality of the journey: sometimes we’re not fit enough, sometimes there’s just not enough hours in the day, sometimes the risk is too great, and sometimes the snow just plain sucks.
Oriah and Siddhartha would have made fine ski partners up there in Red Coon. But Julia and I did our best without them. As we surrendered to the reality of crud skiing, it freed us to laugh at our flailing selves, laugh at the infinite views of the West Elk mountains turned on by sunlight, laugh right back at Ullr and Ra. Sure we didn’t make it all the way to Red Coon (a very short ski by Crested Butte standards); sure we didn’t get a single face shot (unless you count Julia’s face-plunge); sure that night over beers we’d have to listen to our friends say, “You skied where today?!” But hell, we did a fine bit of fun having.
What’s your Buddhist adventure?
Dedicated to Kellen and Jane. Rest in Peace, Kellen; live in peace, Jane.
“Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. And when the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘eachother’ don’t make sense.”
