I have been wanting to blog about my ‘initiation du ski’ for a while now, but to be honest it has been difficult to find the time, the effort and the right internet connection to write for long enough to get out all of my feelings, fears and small accomplishments on this new part of my life.
From a young age, I was no good at sports, long limbs as a child made me a good runner, but an early teens weight gain put a downer on my self esteem that made P.E a nightmare. I hated anything associated with sports, always felt like people were watching and judging me as the ‘fat kid’ tried to do a handstand in gym or get a point in rounders. To this day I am rubbish at most sports, I can’t catch, I have poor aim and terrible balance, I can’t even see the enjoyment in watching sports. It is like a huge blank part of my life, something I don’t understand and have never taken the time to try and understand because I just can’t be bothered, it just passes me by.
Anyway, I came to do this season on a near whim, I reached a point in France when I had to decide if I wanted to take a risk and do a winter season with no skiing experience whatsoever, or just go home and carry on living my life ‘normally’. I can remember replying to the emails to Mountain Lodge with my heart in my chest, hammering like crazy because I thought ‘what am I doing, what if I hate it?’ All the WHAT IFs were swirling around in my mind, driving me insane...so I just tried to block it out. In general my philosophy is ‘go for it’, at least you have tried to do something, not trying failure in itself. And so, I signed four months of my life away to go up a mountain, and work my arse off, my payment would be ski time. Payment in something I had never even tried before...when I arrived I remember my colleagues asking me if I was a boarder or skier, the answer was neither...they were so shocked, and called me so brave for taking a risk like this, to come to a place like this with no experience. I didn’t really realise at the time how right they were, I just sort of took the job and though ‘Oh well, I will give it a go, if I can’t ski, well I will just work all the time...’
When I think back to that first skiing lesson with Darren on the nursery slope six weeks ago, it seems a world away. The oddness of having skis on my feet, the out of control feeling, the panic, the wobbly knees...skiing is the first activity (and I will call it that because I don’t really believe it is a sport) that has become a part of my life, that I can understand. I can see perfectly well why people enjoy skiing, why people pay thousands to come away and throw themselves down mountains at ridiculous speeds with two sticks attached to their feet. The feeling, when you are flying down the piste, the sun on your face, the wind in your hair, your heart speeding inside your chest...it feels so good, so free, the adrenaline rush is like a rollercoaster, only one that YOU are in control of.
I have not been skiing for long, but already it has taught me so many lessons about life and about myself. First of all, even the best fall. Even the people who are near pros make mistakes and lose balance, because no one is perfect and it is in human nature to make errors, every now and again. It reminds us that we are human, we are not invincible. Secondly, go with the flow. Every hill has a bottom that will slow you down. So many times I have felt out of control, felt myself careering over moguls and thinking ‘dear god I am going to die’ but just bend the knees and go with it and soon enough you slow down, at the bottom of every piste is a flat bit, you will stop eventually. This is another good life lesson, not to panic when you feel your life is out of your hands, you just need to calm down and control will come back to you.
Most importantly, skiing is giving me a relationship with my body that I have never had before. Perhaps sports enthusiasts or people who train for a sport will know this feeling, it is like you are in tune with your body. I am learning to trust my instincts, to turn my muscles at the right time and let my body fall into the ‘right’ position, which is so distinct from the ‘wrong’ position. Every time I go out it feels more and more natural, more and more right. The other lesson I have learnt is that practice really does make perfect. So often I give things up too soon for fear of being bad at it, or lack of interest, never have I kept at something long enough for it to start to feel right like skiing is starting to feel.
In some ways, I am so glad now that I didn’t learn as a child, that it didn’t just come to me without really realising it, because this journey I am taking by learning to ski is becoming such a beautiful, poignant part of my life, I would loath to have missed it. When you are in the depths of low self esteem and negative thinking, to find myself learning a new skill, to be brave, to go and work in another country, to live with strangers, to go from snow plough to parallel turns...it feels amazing.
I am constantly learning, and that is a beautiful thing, I am improving, I am falling, failing, and getting back up again. This is me in a the middle of a process, a never ending one in which I will endeavour to always have more courage, to do something instead of imagining myself doing it, but most of all just to try things. That feeling whilst skiing is like flying, I feel so free, so scared, and so joyful all at once. And that feeling would never have been mine, if I didn’t try.
We only get one life, let’s all bite the bullet and just try.
You never know where it might lead.
Spent a glorious weekend in the tiny village of Luz St Sauveur in the Pyrenees chez Frankie.
