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Thursday, March 10, 2005

It's All Downhill From Here

By Carol Mell
For the Journal
    THE TAOS HUM: I coulda been a contender, a downhill skier to make Picabo Street cry her eyes out, swinging through turns with my hips swaying like a model on a runway.
    If, through the winter, my parents had only been willing to spring for equipment and lift passes in the amount of one week's groceries, I'd drive a yellow Hummer instead of my dented Ford with the dog prints on the side. I wouldn't be working, but sitting in a lodge with a toddy before the fire. My drugstore sunglasses with the screw missing would be designer shades I'd wear even in the evening.
    Oh yes, my life would have been different if I'd been on that school bus to Mount Hood with the beautiful kids, our expensive lift tickets hanging from our parkas. Who knows what friends I would have garnered schussing down the mountain in my lemon yellow boots and navy blue skis with edges I had polished to perfection?
    I wouldn't go around saying "nucular" if I knew how to ski. My skin would glow; my breath would smell like mint juleps and I wouldn't snore. I might even have married Mark Rooper who lived in the big house down the street. His father was a lawyer, one of the few men in town with clean fingernails.
    In Finland, where I was a foreign exchange student, they taught me cross-country skiing. Every kid in shouting distance gathered when the adult gringa who couldn't stand up on skis came outside. Being the laughingstock of the county was bad enough, but Finland is flat as a tortilla, so no one ever taught me the snow-plow maneuver. I think it was considered blasphemy.
    After one year, I could ski with the 60-and-over ladies, the two who were patient with slowpokes.
    I had my chance to hit some real slopes in Lapland, but that ended when a knife took off a chunk of thumb. So, instead of downhill skiing I spent a week with my hand elevated.
    Back home I was a good cross-country skier if you discount the fact that I used my butt as a brake. Falling down is never glamorous, but at least downhill skiers are better-dressed. Using your derriere to stop while wearing your dad's long underwear and a pair of navy surplus pants lacks cachet.
    The ski gods were against me. Before I finished college, my parents' cabin burned down, taking my skis, my fishing pole and the dog with it. Then I married and moved to the Arizona desert, "just a screen door away from hell" as they say, where a rich guy trucked in a load of snow every Christmas Eve for the kiddies. It lasted five minutes.
    At Taos Ski Valley I see nothing has changed. While I've gone soft around the middle, those downhill skiers are still sleek on slopes so steep I get a crick in my neck squinting at them. Skiers eschew sweat better than ever these days in their high-tech flight suits.
    I'd feel the Iago of envy whispering in my ear still, but with age comes acceptance. I found a pair of cross-country skis and boots that fit at a garage sale, though the too-long poles smack me in the jaw. Now, even lowly cross-country skiers have micro-this and macro-that. We have zippers under our armpits. We use ingenious backpacks with a bladder outside and a tube leading to our mouths for advanced hydration— way cool, although though they remind me of colonoscopy bags in reverse. I have magical Wiccan socks and wind pants with a discreet sled in the seat. My anorak has a pocket for Jack Daniels.
    Finishing the run at the Enchanted Forest cross-country ski park there is a little hill called "Face Flop Drop." While my husband went around, I stood poised and brave at the top, my life flashing before me. What's left of my thumb tingled, the cruel laughter of Finnish children rang in my memory. Mark Rooper, yellow boots and navy blue skis whizzed by like stray ghosts. I curled into position like a swimmer on a starting block, one with the wind, the model of speed, agility and control.
    I won't discuss what happened next. Let's just say I found out how that hill got its name. This time, at least, I was better dressed.
   
Mell is a freelance writer who lives in Taos. You can email her at taoshum@msn.com or snail mail her at 5826 NDCBU, Taos, NM 87571