We rounded the end of the building and found ourselves in a wide, level area at the foot of the trails. The sun was high in a cloudless sky and the scene dazzling bright. I took my sunglasses out of a pocket and put them on, cutting down the glare. Directly ahead of us was a chair lift, with T-bar, J-bar and poma lift off to our right. Rather gentle, soothing music was being broadcast through loudspeakers around the base area, calming to ski nerves. Nearby, a class group was floundering down a slight practice slope, trying to follow instructions. At least I could feel superior to them.
Julian went inside to get a lift ticket for me, since he and Adria had season passes. While he was gone we sat down on a low wooden bench and put on our skis. I had step-in toe and heel bindings that would release no matter which way I fell, and of course the regulation safety straps that would keep me from losing a ski if I fell out of it. Aside from the inconvenience, a runaway ski could cause serious accidents on a slope. By the time Julian returned, we were ready and standing up with our ski poles grasped through straps, their basket ends thrust into the snow. Adria looked more at ease and confident now.
The first ordeal would be the ski lift. Thanks to Stuart, I could cope, though in the beginning I’d been thrown by rope tows, tossed off T-bars, and tried to plow another skier under while I was riding a J-bar. At least I had learned not to stay in the path of danger when I fell off so I’d get plowed under myself. In a way, the lifts were worse than the skiing, but at least I knew what to expect.
It developed that we were to go up in the Triple Chair and when Julian started toward it I began to make low moaning sounds of protest. Chair lifts were the easiest for going up, but for some strange reason the easy lifts were usually for expert skiers who could come down the professional runs. As a rule the arm-tugging rope tow which could act like a bucking bronco was for the beginner.
Julian reassured me kindly. “Don’t worry. It’s true that the chair takes us to Devil’s Drop over on the far left, but there are easier ways down and we’ll stick to Encore until we see how you do. If you like, we can get off at the halfway station for our first run.”
This being a weekday, the lift line was short and we took our places, with Julian in the lead. When it was our turn to get aboard, we placed ourselves three abreast, with Adria in the middle, and Julian, being the heaviest, on the tower side, our ski poles in one hand, and the other hand behind us to catch the chair as it swung up beneath our knees. It was possible to be banged off your feet if you weren’t careful. This I could now manage with some dexterity—since the chair halted only briefly, this was necessary. Then we were aboard and away, the chair rocking gently as it left the station. I tilted up the front tips of my skis to avoid piles of snow on the ground, remembering the time my tips had caught and I’d gone headlong out of the chair. Julian pulled the blue safety bar down in front of us, and I held onto it tightly with the inside hand that wasn’t gripping my ski poles. Now, for a little while, I could enjoy myself. The lift ran up through a narrow slit cut between trees and as our chair rose high above the ground I experienced an odd sense of release, of freedom. It was as if I were being lifted into a clear and blameless world filled with air and light. Far below the swinging chairs which followed their shadows up the mountain, lay a clean corridor of snow running steeply up the cut, and marked at intervals by the blue posts of the lift. Along one side a trail of footprints marched down, left perhaps by an attendant or by some chair passenger trying to retrieve possessions he’d dropped from the lift.
Beyond the trees on either side of the cut, trails wound down the mountain, and skiers, each encased in his own private world, followed them toward the base. Our chair swung over a ravine, at the bottom of which was a narrow spring-fed lake that furnished water for the snow machines. We moved smoothly now. One tall blue lift tower after another was left behind, and the rise of the mountain steepened. Our shadows, complete with long thin skis, sped up the slope beneath us. In chairs behind and ahead, the bright colors and varieties of ski dress were in evidence. Adria wasn’t the only who wore red.
The halfway point was growing close now as the chair creaked toward it, the machinery rattling like clattering milk bottles. Our shadows rose from the snow to meet us at the station. Once more I lifted my ski tips lest they be caught by the edge of the platform, and in a moment we were sliding out of the chair, Julian gliding ahead down the ramp, with Adria next, and I on the outside, following last. I swallowed my usual impulse to hold back (while my skis ran out from under me!) and pushed with my ski poles to slide down the snowy ramp, snowplowing quickly away from the end, so there would be no pile-up behind me. We had arrived, and the usual moment of truth lay ahead of me.
At least I was temporarily cut free from all the problems and worries that beset me. I couldn’t think about Stuart now. Or about diabolically thrown stones that whizzed past my head. I couldn’t ponder the problem of Adria or Julian’s suffering or the fact that Shan was day Davidson’s wife. All these things whirled dizzily through my mind and were lost before the immediate problem of getting myself down a ski trail without breaking my neck. Perhaps that was why skiing was good therapy. It freed one for the essential, physical matter in hand. Or perhaps “under ski” would be a better way to put it.
Julian said, “I’ll see you down the first run, if you like, Linda,” and went skating off toward the top of the Encore trail.
“Come along,” Adria said. “This run is pretty boring, but you don’t have to go down it twice.”
For me it wasn’t boring. I persuaded Julian to go over to the next, more professional slope, even though he was entering from the halfway point. Then I got Adria to start ahead of me down Encore—and was left on my own. Even for me, the run was easy enough to give me no trouble. The snow was well packed, but with a rough surface that offered purchase for my skis. I set my edges and started down using stem Christies back and forth, traversing the fall line, occasionally slowing myself with a snowplow—trying nothing fancy, my skis clattering over the hard pack. Here the moguls weren’t bad, though I hated those disconcerting humps of hard-packed snow carved by many skiers turning at the same point. At night the snow cats would get out and chop the worst ones down for busy skiers to set up again the next day.
Someone behind me shouted, “On your left!” and I got out of the way of a descending skier who was obviously not altogether in control. At least he hadn’t shouted “Look out!”—which would have told me nothing. Not all the dangers of skiing had to do with the trails and one’s own skill.
This was my first skiing of the winter and I discovered to my surprise that somehow during the long months of lying fallow I had improved. I seemed to have greater confidence, more skill than last winter. I wished Stuart could see me. I was doing something entirely on my own, and I wasn’t doing it badly. The experts might scorn my stem turns, but I felt a sudden exhilaration over such improvement. These moments of elation, of growing confidence were what skiing was all about. Speed would never be my thing, but this—this experience of snow underfoot, the mountain slipping past, with a cold wind on my face, a warming sun overhead to make the snow sparkle with diamonds, plus a modest competence achieved—for a few moments all this was wonderfully heady. When I joined Julian and Adria at the foot of the run my blood was tingling and I knew my eyes were bright.
Julian smiled at me, the harshness of his face softening. “I watched you come down, and you’re not bad at all. Someone’s been teaching you well.”
I could have told him the teaching was his, even though once removed. Strange to realize this was so.
“Let’s go up again!” Adria cried. “You’re fine, Linda. We’ll try Hemlock this time.” She seemed a different child on the mountain. There was therapy for her here too.
I was braver now, and while I left Devil’s Drop to Julian, I managed Hemlock several times, thanks to an off day when the lift lines were short, and we could go up again quickly. I even went to the top of the chair—the top of the lift—once I w
as acquainted with the run, and there we pushed over to where Devil’s Drop fell away, and watched Julian go down until he was out of sight beneath an overhanging cornice of the mountain.
He too had come to life and was a different man, now that the slopes called him. It was as if ice had been momentarily thawed by that inner fire with which he met the mountain and the snow. It was marvelous to watch him as he went down with a twisting grace and great speed and control, a lithe figure in his dark green, fitting the scene about him, belonging to it.
Adria watched in rapture. “My father’s still the best in the world,” she told me when he’d dropped from view. “Stuart Parrish thinks he’s good, but he’ll never touch my father.”
I said nothing, and we went back to the top of Hemlock and I skied down in Adria’s wake. Perhaps the sight of Julian’s perfection went to my head and I tried to be better than I was, for I caught one ski tip on a mogul and went sprawling and sliding across packed snow. My skis released, dangling from their thongs, and I crawled hastily to the side of the trail where I’d be out of the way of others coming down. Adria heard me fall, and she made an uphill turn and skied to a stop. Then she sidestepped up the edge of the trail and came to help me to my feet. The injury to my newborn pride was greater than any physical hurt. I put on my skis in a state of chagrin and made the rest of the run with less careless aplomb. Adria was surprisingly considerate and made no fun of me. “Everyone falls,” she said, offering comfort.
When we reached the bottom she said nothing of my mishap, but pleaded with her father to go over to the big ice palace which had been built for children, where there were tunnels to crawl through, and surprising scenes to be discovered inside. Julian let her go and took me into one of the upstairs A-frame lounges that overlooked the skiing area.
The room was cozy and warm. We sat at a polished wooden table next to a great triangle of glass panes, and Julian ordered glühwein. The carpet on the floor was a warm, deep red, and there were slanting brown timbers overhead. Only two or three other tables were occupied and we sat by ourselves in the quiet room.
Julian had helped me off with my parka and I sat fingering my silver Ullr on its chain. When I let it swing free of my hand, he stared at it with sudden intensity.
“What’s that?” he said. “Where did you get it?”
His questioning was so abrupt that I wondered uneasily if he had seen it before—if perhaps Stuart had shown it to him before he gave it to me. I answered carefully.
“It’s only an Ullr medallion that was given to me. I suppose they come in all sorts of forms. I wear it for luck—the way other skiers do.”
“What’s on the other side?” he asked.
I turned it so he could see the shaded diamond, tipped on its point—that symbol to warn the inexpert.
“This is supposed to encourage me to greater efforts than I want to make,” I said.
He laughed and seemed to relax, but now and then his eyes strayed to the medallion as though something about it puzzled him. However, he talked on casually enough, telling me about the room we were in—that on Saturdays it was well filled, and there was usually a banjo player to entertain in the afternoon.
I found it pleasantly quiet now. Yet I couldn’t relax and enjoy this moment as I’d have liked to. With no effort needed to stay on my feet, everything else came rushing back—all my concerns and fears and oppressive secrets. I’d have given anything to face Julian honestly and talk to him about Stuart. But this I could not do.
Instead, I asked if he missed the competition skiing and traveling about to the best skiing areas here and abroad. He didn’t seem to resent my asking. His eyes rested on the mountain slopes beyond the window, the green of trees and brilliant white of snow shining in the sunlight. Faintly from outside, music came to us. The tune was “Moonlight in Vermont.” I wondered how these slopes could look by moonlight. There was night skiing here, I knew.
“I suppose I miss it to some extent,” he said, finally answering my question. “Though not as much as I did in the beginning. The excitement gets into your blood, the need to meet a challenge, to prove yourself. The exhilaration of winning. I suppose no one knows what it’s really like unless he’s done it.”
I knew something about it from Stuart. Skiing could be a passion, a religion.
“The mystique,” I said, sipping hot, spicy, mulled wine.
“Don’t put it down if you haven’t felt it.”
“I’m only trying to understand. For instance, how can people give whole lifetimes to working at this sort of thing?” I waved my hands to include the entire ski area. “It’s a playtime world. It’s not real. Even running a lodge for skiers isn’t—”
His laughter cut into my words. “The work ethic, you mean? But this may be a better way of earning a living than most, my little Puritan. Perhaps in our age it’s a man’s playtime that enables him to get closer to the natural things he’s lost. Perhaps it keeps him from being swallowed whole by what you call the real world—which can be a pretty greedy monster. Out here there’s time to look at the sky, at the hills, at the earth. Even into yourself. All this may be closer to reality than you think because here you can get back to being part of the universe. I don’t count any of these lives lost. Those who come out from the cities envy us.”
“I know there’s a bond—a very real one—between people who ski, and I know that must count for a lot.”
“Yes, there’s that. Strong friendship can develop when you have skiing in common. Even après-ski is more fun because skiing has turned you on.”
“But I don’t see why the mountain climber must climb still another mountain. Or why a man must cross an ocean in a small boat. Why does one have to be the best and the fastest on a ski slope? To say one climbs because the mountain’s there isn’t good enough. Where does the drive come from? Why does it exist?”
Unexpectedly, he was as curious about me as I was about him. “How have you remained so untouched, so uninvolved?” he countered. “Hasn’t this sort of passion ever touched you?”
“Uninvolved!” I choked over the word. “Honestly! I’m the most involved person I—”
“With other people’s lives,” he broke in. “What about you? Who are you? What do you want?”
I floundered, unable to answer him. He saw with too much perception a question I was afraid to face.
“What frightened you away from life?” he asked softly.
There was a betrayal of tears in my eyes, but I truly did not know why they were there. He saw them and reached out to cover my hand with his. I had a curious wish to turn my hand and grasp his—to be the leaning one, instead of the leaned upon. But I did not move. I sat very still, blinking desperately.
He let me go and sat back and there was a gentleness about him that I’d never seen before.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no right to turn that particular screw. Perhaps you’ll tell me someday.”
How could I tell anyone what I didn’t understand myself? I fumbled for a handkerchief and blew my nose crossly. He smiled at me almost tenderly and returned to my original question of where the drive came from that thrust a man to strange heights.
“Perhaps it’s not a woman’s thing, after all,” Julian said. “Or at least not for many women, though there are always a few who rise to a challenge. My wife wasn’t one of them. Margot liked the excitement of the resort area for itself. She liked beautiful sports clothes and beautiful people. She thrived on admiration. Even though she skied well and enjoyed it, there was never any passion in her feeling for it.”
I wondered if he had minded that, if he had needed a woman who would share the same passion.
“And there is with you?” I asked.
His eyes had a faraway look—a look that saw beyond the slopes outside our window. As if he remembered higher mountains, longer trails. He didn’t need to answer my question. It was there in his face, only now there was a sense of loss—loss of the perfection he had once achieved, loss of all
that fantastic skill in the face of danger which had once been his. He was like the sculptor who could no longer sculpt, the singer who could not sing. Still, I must probe and try to understand. Because I wanted to understand Stuart as well, I told myself.
“Was it the testing you wanted? Pitting yourself as a man against all those natural obstacles?”
His gaze came back from the distance to study me thoughtfully. “You’ve come close to it. A man needs to know he can dominate his own fears. It’s not the athletic ability that matters most. It’s the ability to cope with pressure—and win. That instinct’s still embedded in us, but there’s little opportunity to use it today. And when a man stops testing himself he’s lost, wasted, spent.”
I couldn’t bear the look in his eyes—that look of loss. “But you aren’t any of those things!” I cried.
He smiled at me over his wine glass, and the glimpse of inner privation was gone. “No, I’m not. I have other things to do, and I can still ski. There are many ways for a man to test himself. It’s unfortunate if he puts his heart into only one.”
Yet he had done that, I thought. As had Stuart. Once more I felt an unwanted stirring in me, a response I had no wish to feel. Julian McCabe was possibly my enemy. Yet how could I see him in that light? For some reason I remembered the stand of dead beech trees outside the drawing-room window at Graystones. I remembered my own unexpected response to that wild scene. As though something in me that had always slept stirred dangerously. Once those dead trees had flamed and burned themselves out. Julian was like that—ice, where there had once been fire, except when I’d seen him on the slopes and some spark had come alive again. It had not entirely died away, and that strange feeling in me that answered wildness reacted to the hint of fire. What would it be like if he ever came fully to burning life again? And how little I knew myself that the very thought brought in me this rising response. This was a frightening thing to realize—that I knew myself so little.
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