The Best of Outside by Outside Magazine Editors

Author:Outside Magazine Editors [Magazine, The Editors of Outside]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76531-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-28T16:00:00+00:00

We lived in the west end of Aspen, which was the old residential section. The town was still relatively indifferent to fashion. Skiing began on Thanksgiving Day when you came down from the mountain, face seared by the cold, unseasoned legs weary, and sat down to the most memorable of meals. Around Easter, skiing ended—in early April, when occasionally some of the biggest storms came.

When we lived in the East you drove for hours to ski and often waited in long lines. Skiing was a kind of pilgrimage. In Aspen it was different, it surrounded you, winter and skiing. There were the still hot days of early October cutting wood in the forest and the first white dusting of distant peaks, the nights growing colder, autumn ending, the blizzards and epic days, the evening fire soaring around logs you had split yourself, breakfast in town with exhaust drifting up in the cold from cars with glazed windows. The world was far away; in fact this was the world. To the south and west the clouds would turn dark blue, and a certain smell, like the smell of rain, lay in the air. Tremendous storms coming, the roofs piled high with snow.

There are days, months, even years when you feel invincible, dropping down the back of Bell, Corkscrew, Moment of Truth as if slipping down the stairs, edges biting, bumps disappearing in your knees. The memory of it all will stay forever. You hate to have it end. You are slicing the mountain as if with a knife. Of course even on great days there is always that lone skier, oddly dressed, off to the side past the edge of the run, going down where it is steepest and the snow untouched, in absolute grace, marking each dazzling turn with a brief jab of the pole—there is always him, the skier you cannot be. Afterward the hotness of the bath, darkness falling, the snow deep outside, couples in the street downtown, the restaurants filled, faces you know.

There are dull days on the mountain and days of indescribable joy, the runs empty, the air speckled with cold. People come to town who’ve been given your name, people come to dinner—the winter brings you together, somehow makes you friends. You become a kind of guide. Ex-hot shots on their college ski teams, confident despite years in the city and wiggling their hips in anticipation, say, “Let’s go” and “You lead the way.” In a minute or two they’re passing by in an approximation of their old form, still ready to compete. Skiing is a little like dancing, grace seeks to be admired. “Where to?” they cry. “What next?”

“Oh, let’s go straight ahead, there’s a run just over the crest.” It’s a narrow, bumpy chute, invisible until you are practically on it, and will instill a sense of moderation—for a long time it also had a tree in a very inconvenient spot. At the bottom when they arrive, you merely remark, “That was great, wasn’t it?”

“What’s that called again?”

“Blondie’s.

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