 |
| Not me. Knees bent, shoulders facing down the slope, the pleasure self-evident |
As a beginner your turns are more complex but safer. Also uglier. You tire quickly. You yearn to be effortless.
It's astonishing how little you do to turn properly. You straighten up ever so slightly from bent knees and simultaneously push gently with your knees; the shape of your skis does the rest. The pleasure is sensual or possibly sensuous, enhanced by the sound your skis make: hissing if you've done well, scratching if you haven't.
As you turn you "walk" your poles rhythmically on either side of the curve you are making/following. Beginners have problems with poles because they appear to contribute nothing physical. True, pole movements simply co-ordinate your turns as a metronome times the music you create. Nevertheless precise pole movements add to the beauty of skiing.
The skier who's turning correctly turns his shoulders to face down the slope. This shoulder movement is non-intuitive since the body wants them to face up the slope. You know when you've got it right because everything else is slightly easier to perform.
I skied for about twenty-five years, always improving during the latter years. Then nothing, without warning. It was like losing - let's say - my nose. I am different, reduced psychologically, incomplete.
Why the dash between ski and ing? New invention? I never learned anything beyond a good harsh stem turn. Good exercise. Haven't been downhilling in years, but nordic skating - ah - now there's a feeling. Skating and sailing both rank as sensations on par with eating, drinking, and smooth working excretory functions.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: I've removed the hateful hyphen, there was only one. Also made several other small changes
ReplyDeleteI wanted to describe parallel turns using as little ski jargon (eg, parallel turn, stem turn, unweighting, pole planting) as possible so that - faint hope! - non-skiers might understand what I've lost. I agree with the three analogies you cite and would add the initial act of connection that leads to a copulative climax and the sensation of spreading spreadable butter on soft bread while recalling the problems of using conventional butter taken straight out of the fridge.
I can't pretend I always managed to ski parallel, the terrain frequently forced me into stem turns. But I knew enough to hate myself as I stemmed. I've done nordic (we call it cross-country) and enjoyed it but it has virtually nothing in common, psychologically, with downhilling.
I lost skiing to age as I lost rock climbing (much earlier) and distance swimming (rather later). All three activities flirt with forms of fear and that is why their loss is so poignant, and so much resented. It may be I felt unmanned on each occasion.
It is why I still motorcycle, albeit in smaller doses!
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in Bavaria included skiing like cycling and climbing trees.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter rolls her eyes when I mention that we skied to school in winter (cross country, not downhill, Franconia is flat).
And ice skating.
You just watched the others and off you went.
All that stuff about turning and weight and what to do with the pole, how to wax and what day etc.
And I hated it. I mostly remember freezing my toes off.
Now, skiing is a bad word in my family's vocabulary, what with the environmental impact and all that stuff. I have a brother who does research, he can dish out the most awful facts.
Avus: The point about skiing is that it's a gradually acquired skill. When it departs you lose something that's physical and personal. Also it's unassisted (other than by gravity) and it's all up to you. Quiet too.
ReplyDeleteSabine: Sounds as if skiing didn't take. As to environmental impact don't forget the pluses: work for people who would otherwise be unemployed, in areas where work is rare.
Toes freezing. Boots too tight or made of the wrong stuff. My last pair were as comfortable as slippers. I didn't even need to slacken them when sitting down for a beer.
Surely you enjoyed cross-country? It's walking, made more efficient.
Skiing loses its cool when you have to get onto these long things almost every morning in the dark. Remember skis and skiing boots ca. 1965-1975? Add to this that I had to use up my sister's cast offs. Ever had to put on solidly frozen or wet wool mittens?
ReplyDeleteThis was all cross country. We were fast as light, or so we thought.
Back home, my mother would put my feet into buckets of warm and cold water, alternating, to reawaken the circulation.
As for the environmental impact, check out artificial snow (which is made with bacteria to help freezing when it's not) before you get into vanishing tree lines and receding snow lines and decreasing snow cover and transport emissions and more.
In Bavaria/Austria where my brother's research is focused, many former skiing resorts are switching to all year round sustainable holiday options with a much more favourable impact on jobs and climate protection. I realise that all the handsome skiing instructors may now be forced to become mountain guides or having to sell organic ice cream but it could be worse.
There is a lot of really good work being done in the Alpine regions to tackle the impact of climate change and to make Alpine tourism sustainable. Unfortunately, downhill skiing with more and more artificial snow is not going to be part of that future.
Sabine: Ah, I see you've really gone into it. I first skied in 1978 and downhill boots were still a problem then. However one of the attractions of cross-country skiing was that the boots were quite different - much lighter, more flexible - though wearing cast-offs would have added an undesirable elemnt. And I was never required to ski pre-dawn, day in, day out.
ReplyDeleteIn fact one of the tenets of my life is that there are certain cultural activities one should never be forced to do: Ulysses, Proust, The Ring Cycle, skiing, Jean-Luc Godard movies other than A Bout de Souffle, Olivier Messiaen's oeuvre, are a representative selection. One should always embark on them of one's own volition. Which I did over a long long period and (eventually) enjoyed them all. I can see why skiing is a no-no for you and why it is an antipathy that has subsequently grown.
Although I have skied in Engelberg, Zermatt, Cervinia, Sestrière, Santa Caterina, Villars, Panorama and Lech, mostly I've used French-speaking resorts (Crans-Montana a lot, Meribel quite a lot, Tignes, Serre Chevalier, Valmorel, Puy St Vincent, Les Deux Alpes) where the language is an added attraction. Some of these used artificial snow which I've always found pointless; all that technological effort to produce very little usable snow.
My sudden loss of skill occurred in (I think) 2008 or slightly earlier, and I was less aware of environmental concerns then. Incidentally the most grotesque enviromental blot is a huge indoor snow piste, with lifts, in Dubai. No doubt Germany is leading the way in reducing handsome ski instructors (never a bonus for me) to the breadline but progress must inevitably be slow. When one looks at the municipal investment in ski lifts in, say, Zermatt you feel they will keep going to the bitter end.
Anyway I'm out of it, no longer a criminal. While it lasted it was a mystical experience in which fear and grace co-existed, almost a unique combination. If I sinned then I did so in ignorance. The money I once spent on lift-passes is now spent on Wagner and R. Strauss CDs as well as visits to German Christmas markets, so I continue to contribute in a small way to the German economic miracle.
Oh, I almost forgot. The cultural bonds are even tighter these days because the best songs have German lyrics. And the duets, ah the duets...
Sie würzet unsre Lebenstage,
Sie wirkt im Kreise der Natur,
Ihr hoher Zweck zeigt deutlich an,
Nichts Edler's sei, als Weib und Mann...
How sad that you can only recognise this and not - like me - discover it. I jest, you understand.
Come on, don't put yourself yourself as a criminal. Little did we know etc.
ReplyDeleteWhen I met my father last Sunday, he mentioned how dreadful it has been for him as a scientist to be made aware of the detrimental effects we humans have on the climate, which in his case (agricultural science) started early on (1972, Limits of Growth, Club of Rome). Let me admit that it has been a curse at times, my father's never ending lectures, and that I often had the wish to not know about it at all.
Sabine: No statute of limitations, then?
ReplyDelete