Hello, Spring

As anyone who reads this column even occasionally knows, I love winter. When others are lamenting the arrival of cold and snow in December – and its continuation after the winter holidays and beyond – I am hoping for more snow and enough cold to sustain good skiing.

After the stretch of warm, sunny days we had last week and into this one, though, it’s hard not to look forward to spring.

Last weekend featured two blue-bird days on the mountain. Sunday afternoon, after exploring some of Cannon’s finer spots for skiing and sightseeing with the group of 6- and 7-year-olds I help coach, I met up with my own kids and enjoyed the rare occasion of skiing with all three of them. (Yes, they now have to wait for Mom at the bottom most runs.) It was so warm that I stripped down to a t-shirt and vest. We eschewed the most crowded places on the mountain for long, sunny chairlift rides and laps of turning through perfectly soft, not-quite-slushy snow.

Once home, the kids swapped ski duds for shorts. There was front porch sitting and passing of the football, as well as their recent favorite driveway game – while they wait for the yard to melt out – wall ball off the last big snowbank in the shady (and muddy) corner of the driveway. We checked out the spiky shoots of the crocuses poking through the barely thawed dirt of the window garden, and we’re keeping an eye on the front garden, where we planted bulbs between the perennials last fall.

Even the dog, who embraces just about any kind of weather, has seemed happier than usual outside. She’s taken to lying in her favorite warm weather spots again and looks at us mournfully when we suggest it’s time to come in. If there’s sun to lie in, mud to get messy in, and a few remnant patches of snow for blissful rolling, she is a happy girl.

We weren’t, of course, the only ones soaking in the early spring goodness. Baselodge restrictions this year have brought the ski area tailgating game to a whole new level, and every parking lot at the mountain boasted mini grills, chairs and tables set up next to truck beds, and folks enjoying a variety of beverages. On the short drive home, we saw three bicyclists pedaling away, seemingly oblivious to the months-long pileup of road salt and sand along the road edges. People were out doing yard work or playing in the park or gathering with neighbors in driveways.

I’ve been around long enough to know that a couple of nice weeks in March does not mean spring is really here. I’m certain it will snow again before we get through April – probably the day after the snow tires come off my car. In the meantime, I’ll take all the t-shirt-skiing, front-porch-sitting, early-blooming-flowers, and gathering-together-in-the-sun days that come my way.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's March 25, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Ski Season Shuffle

We are three and a half months into ski season, with who knows how long to go. Despite the weird and wacky weather, which has brought us more rain this winter than snow, the skiing has been plentiful, and ski season has been busy. Busier than usual this year, because my children have entered into the world of ski racing, and I have jumped back into a weekend coaching gig.

Throw in a smattering of ski writing deadlines, which sometimes involve traveling to other ski areas, and it all means ski season is an all-consuming entity. The mudroom is a muddle of skis and boot bags and helmets. The gear collection spills into the living room, where ski boots are lined up to dry by the radiator, which is piled high with hats, mittens, and neck gaiters.

Notes about night skiing and spring skiing and adaptive skiing are scattered around my makeshift office at the dining room table. House projects we started months ago, including an ambitious plan to shift bedrooms, have been abandoned in the fullness of ski season. Non-skiing plans are delayed to that vague point of “after ski season,” and there are some friends we just don’t see as much this time of year.

This ski-centricity is a phenomenon probably impossible to explain to someone not involved in skiing. But my skiing friends and cohorts will understand: skiing is not merely a hobby, or a way to pass the normally cold and snowy months of winter, or even a passion. It is an inherent, un-extractable part of simply being.

Skiing is why we wake up before the sun during the darkest days of winter. It is why we don innumerable layers on the coldest days of the year and are willing to face the elements, whether sub-zero chill, gale force winds, sleet, rain, snow, or sunshine. It is why we forgo other things to buy equipment and passes and why we stay up late tuning skis. It is something we think about, sometimes dream about, during even the dog days of summer.

Skiing is why I moved west after college, seeking higher mountains, deeper snow, a skiing life in a skiing town. And it is why, when I came back East five years later, I landed in the mountains, why I am here still.

My dad used to tell me when I lived out west, probably in an attempt to lure me home again, that skiing is skiing. Doesn’t matter where you do it, it’s the same. I’d scoff at such a crazy concept as I headed out to ski Colorado powder on a mountain whose base was 5,000 feet higher in elevation than my home hill’s summit.

The snow in Crested Butte is a good bit different than the snow on Cannon Mountain. And it’s different, probably, than European snow and Tahoe snow and Midwestern snow. But it turns out that skiing IS skiing. Yes, skiing powder is different than skiing hard pack (and goodness knows there have been days this season when I have lamented the ice and longed for a deep dose of Rocky Mountain powder). Groomers are different than bump runs or glades. Flats are different than steeps.

But there’s something in the feeling of it all that is intrinsically the same. Skiing is freedom and grace. It is strength and precision and the thrill of self-made speed. It is unbridled joy at each perfect turn – and the imperfect ones, too.

Some ski seasons are longer than others. This one, here in the East, has been particularly challenging in many ways, and there are moments when I feel ready for the busy shuffle of ski season to shift definitively to spring, ready to pack away all the gear and move on to the next season, ready to sleep in and not hurry everyone out of the house for first chair.

But then I click into my skis and arc my way down a mountain and everything else fades away. There is only skiing then, and it is worth a little shuffling.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 11, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.