I was having a phone conversation last night with Erin. At some point I was discussing something about picking oneself up and starting over at something. Me and my funny brain made a connection to an incident in my life where I was teaching someone about skiing and fear. Indulge me if you will as I embark on a story about fear of snow…
In case you haven’t picked it up by now, I grew up skiing in a town called Park City. To put it mildly I can ski well. I used to compete on the national circuit for freestyle. You know the Moguls, Airials, and at the time also Ballet. I wasn’t too shabby, making nationals every year I competed except one. I had great coaches, and obviously a great place to learn to ski. What ends up happening eventually is that you meet someone who wants to learn how you do what you do. Normally, I’m generally cool about showing people things I’ve learned. I don’t mind.
It was a beautiful day of skiing at Alta with a girl I was keen on. Her brother and his girlfriend were there too. We were having a pretty darn good day of skiing. Then towards the end of the day she asked me how it is that I’m able to ski through the moguls so fast without being scared of killing myself. To explain how I do it, I found a nice short run of moguls where I stopped us all at the top to give the lesson that was taught to me. First explanation is that you have to lose your fear of falling on snow. Pretty simple really. You can’t ski to your full potential if you’re afraid of falling.
Everyone nods their head in agreement signifying they understand what I’m saying. Next I explain that skiing moguls is really just the same as carving turns only its more three-dimensional than groomed runs. Again, everyone is with me. Next part is to get into the mindset of going straight down a mogul run without making a single turn and then stopping at the bottom. This is where I tend to lose people. However, they hung in there saying ok. A little unsure of my approach but they were willing to accept my idea.
Actually I didn’t come up with it, one of my coaches did. I had the same reaction when he taught it to me. To prove his point, my coach said you will do what I do and everything will be fine. He was right. So I told them the same thing, you will do what I do and you’ll be fine. Like my coach before me, I decided to set the example to show how it’s done. I pushed over the edge onto the mogul run and proceeded to head straight down not making a single turn. You have to be ready like a shock absorber when you’re doing this because moguls can get big.
I’m picking up speed and nearly halfway down. Then 2/3 of the way down. Now I’m going warp speed and it’s fairly hairy. I’m about 3 moguls from the end of the run to where I can pull a huge olympic style ending stop when all of a sudden I ejected out of both skis. Seems the trough of this particular mogul didn’t agree with the flex in my skis at the speed I was travelling and decided to take my skis off for me. My first reaction was to get my feet up and in front of me. Split seconds can mean so much in a situation like this. Unfortunately my speed got the better of me and I didn’t get my feet up in time. My boots clipped toes first right into the top of the next mogul.
Next thing I know, I’m head over heals and I land head into the snow on the last mogul of the run. Bounce, there goes the goggles. Right side up boots come down into the snow again. Boing, oops lost a ski pole. Headplant in the snow again. Doink, there’s another glove and ski pole. Repeat the end over end process a couple more times. I finish the yard sale on my back layed out like Jesus Christ on the snow. I couldn’t move.
I hear my “students” screaming to see if I was ok and skiing closer. They were gathering my things as they came down slowly and steady. By the time they reached me I still couldn’t move. I was certainly not a happy camper. A lone ski patrol shussed up and stopped. I remember him saying my God, if I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes I’d never believe the story. The patrolman starts asking me questions like who’s the president. What day is it. I’m starting regain movement, but I’m stiff as hell. I answer him while concentrating on breathing since I was having difficulty with such a mundane task in the past few minutes.
A few more minutes go by. The patrolman finally asks what the hell I was thinking doing what I did. I tell him I was teaching my friends how to ski moguls and lose their fear of snow. His response was classic “I think you’ve put them off it for good.” He was right. They weren’t too excited to try what I did for fear of repeating what just happened. Getting up was my goal and eventually I did. I wasn’t feeling very spritely but I was able to ski to the bottom of the mountain to end the day. Needless to say I probably gave them more fear than less. Unfortunately I never met up with her again. I think I traumatized her.
Nothing like having a severe case of whiplash. I’m amazed I was even capable of holding my head up to ski and drive home. That night I couldn’t sleep I was in so much pain and the moment my head wasn’t straight up, I had to grab hold of it with my hands so it wouldn’t flop off my body. I literally could not hold my head up on its own. The next day began two weeks of chiropractic visits, recovery, and living in a neck brace. Ouch.
Just so you know, it hasn’t stopped me from skiing. As soon as I could hold my head up I was back on snow. I still ski moguls. I still ski fast. I don’t fear the snow. But it was hard picking myself up from that. Much like in music, you keep picking yourself up and moving on. This particular song is that same sort of mentality. Getting out there, making those mistakes, picking yourself up and moving on. I have the feeling the Dixie Chicks have been going through that ever since Mrs. Maine’s comments about the president.
Talk about a backlashing. Man, what an ordeal for an artist to go through. To get lambasted like that and to have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and work your ass off to get going again. I’ve done it numerous times – not yet at their level, but I will. What’s interesting is that I’ve met the songwriter for Wide Open Spaces, Susan Gibson. She’s a real sweetheart. Though my time of hanging out with her was brief, I felt a sense of pride being able to hang with someone like her.
See the interesting thing about her song is that from a business side she got extremely lucky. No one bothered to see if the Dixie Chicks had penned it. So it fell through the cracks so to speak. Thus Susan got to keep all her publishing and writers share. To put it mildly it was a financial windfall because of the Dixie Chicks huge success. One can only imagine how many times Susan has had to pick herself up going through learning pains in life to write that song. Support a fellow JPF friend (you know, the organization I won for best video in 2006 from). Buy the song if you don’t have it. I’ll see if I can dig up Susan’s version to play here for you too. Now get out there and pick yourself up and move on!
(** Disclaimer: If the Dixie Chicks label decide to single me out in a wide open space, I’ll have to narrow my post by taking out the sound. The text will remain to show you shouldn’t stop doing what you love. **)