The Great Northern Express by Howard Frank Mosher

Author:Howard Frank Mosher [Mosher, Howard Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-45095-1
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

31

Why I Am a Cross-Country Skier,

Part 1

The conditions that morning were ideal for skiing. The temperature was about ten degrees above zero. It was clear and windless. Several inches of new snow covered the dooryard, glowing with a lovely bluish tint in the dawn light. Having finally finished a draft of our landlady’s story and another story besides, I thought I’d celebrate by taking a day to go skiing. I slid my skis into our beat-up station wagon and drove to a resort a couple of hours away. I bought my lift ticket, then waited a few minutes for the chairlift to start operating. I was the first and, so far, the only customer.

I’d chosen a medium-length trail, somewhere between half and three-quarters of a mile long, and it appeared that I’d have it entirely to myself, at least for the first run down. Though noticeably colder here on the mountain, it was a splendid morning. As I rose, effortlessly, up the slope, I counted more than twenty other peaks, their snowy tops glowing as pink as strawberry ice cream in the sunrise. Already I was anticipating the matchless exhilaration of a clean, swooping downhill run on brand-new powdery snow.

Floating up the mountain fifteen to twenty feet over the tops of snow-laden evergreens, I shivered slightly. Like many local skiers, I scorned fashionable ski wear, and instead was dressed in long johns, wool pants, a couple of flannel shirts under a sweater, a red-and-black-checked hunting jacket, and a red wool hunting cap with earflaps. A breeze had come up, and the air sparkled with crystalline flakes of ice, like hoar frost. Each time the chair rolled under a lift tower, it made a small thud, like a kiddie ride at a fair. Riding a chairlift is like going up in a safe and stable Ferris wheel at an innocent country carnival.

The lift line inclined at a steeper slant. My chair stopped. All the chairs on the lift stopped. It was totally silent. Alone in midair, I was out of sight of the ski lodge below and the landing deck on the mountaintop above.

Of course, this had happened to me before. All ski lifts stop occasionally, usually for reasons obscure to their riders. Soon enough the chairs would start to move again, and I’d be on my way. They didn’t, though, and I wasn’t. I sat waiting in that big wooden-and-steel contraption, swaying in the gathering breeze, and nothing happened at all. What was I supposed to do? Call for help on my cell phone? This was 1964. My feet were getting cold. So were my mittened hands. I stamped one foot, then the other, on the metal ski rest, rattling my wooden skis like deer antlers. There was no response, just the enveloping, now vaguely unsettling, silence. I noticed that it had begun to snow. The breeze had picked up into a gusting wind.

Higher up the slope, a grooming machine on caterpillar treads emerged from the thickening snowflakes. I waved my hunting cap at the driver, who looked warm and content inside his glass-enclosed cab.

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