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Ou sont les neiges d'antan? Where indeed? Let's not be bitter about time's passage |
Sport may enhance fitness and encourage camaraderie but it is essentially pointless. Its so-called benefits may be pursued more efficiently in other ways.
Ski-ing was my favourite sport for a couple of decades until increasing age told me it was a long drawn-out form of suicide. That there was a good chance I’d die on the slopes. And ski-ing was even more pointless – and misunderstood – than many other more accessible sports.
Ask a non-skier: What’s the point of ski-ing? Chances are the response would be: To get to the bottom. Wrong. The bottom of the slope is incidental. One arrives there because one has taken the ski-lift as a means of storing the energy on which ski-ing is based. Gravity’s energy.
If one discards the coarser explanations (“It’s a licensed grope.”) ballroom dancing provides the best analogy. One doesn’t dance to cross the ballroom. Or to perform endless circles round it. It is the way one does these things. The pursuit of grace. Same with ski-ing.
The essence of ski-ing is in making turns. One quickly learns that this is harder than it looks. Because of the need to avoid going faster and causing suicide to arrive more quickly. Open up the skis into a vee shape and one may ski – and turn – very slowly. A scritching ugly form of locomotion. The aim is to ski and turn with the skis parallel. Many skiers never quite manage this.
But when one does the sense of effortlessness and elegant movement becomes inescapable. One feels more handsome, more intelligent and more controlled. And this happens in areas of extreme natural beauty. One stops ski-ing briefly, ordering a mulled wine at a café, watching others ski by. Sharing their grace vicariously and without envy.
Soccer? Those depressingly gormless crowds. Nah.
In my thirties I took at least two skiing holidays a year. It's a sport where you are in competition only with yourself and, of course, the weather.
ReplyDeleteYou're right it's about achieving the graceful turns, which took me some time. I gave up after a huge crash where I was taken out by a hooligan on a snowboard. He knocked me over and sped off, leaving me battered and bruised and struggling to get to safety. The only satisfaction is that I found his very expensive lift pass stuck to one of my skis.
Shortly after that a friend broke her leg badly when a snowboarder knocked her over and she fell onto the edge of her own ski, shattering her thigh. I decided that the hooligans were taking over and it was too dangerous for graceful skiing.
I took up motorcycling and ballroom dancing instead!
Jean: I remember ski-ing when snowboarding was starting to becoming popular. The noise boards make over compacted snow is quite different from that of skis - a bumping scratchy noise - and I recall the apprehension I experienced when I sensed a board behind me. All boarders seemed to be far too young to be out on the slopes; convinced they were going to live for ever. When I lost my ski-ing ability - in Zermatt of all places - I took up mid-length swimming, one mile twice a week.
ReplyDeleteVisually, it is quite beautiful. I enjoy watching it on TV, but I've never actually tried it. It seems dangerous. Does it feel dangerous? Is it actually a sport? I suppose it is if you compete.
ReplyDeleteColette: I could write two thousand words on the points you raise straight off. Let me be concise.
ReplyDeleteCompetition does occur but only a tiny percentage of skiers race. Ski-racing is very dangerous; ordinary ski-ing is dangerous and I had a shocking accident where the treatment was in many ways worse than the crash. I was aware of the risks (as I was with rock climbing and motorbike riding) and it is clear that the world is divided into risk-takers and risk-abhorers. VR, my wife, is firmly in the scond group. Risk-takers employ ridiculous rhetoric to defend themselves, saying, among other things, that taking risks makes them more aware of being alive. Pure BS. The fact is ski-ing is hard to learn and watching a well-populated part of the piste for, say, ten minutes shows that many skiers have only learned about half of the skill.
But is hard-to-learn the same as taking risks? Is it perverse to go on doing something that is difficult? Have you ever done that with anything? Singing is hard to learn yet the goal (to sing with a singer's voice) makes the work worthwhile. Besides, the work consists of singing, if imperfectly. Singing has transformed me though it would take ages to explain why.
Then there's state of grace one enjoys when ski-ing improperly. Recently you posted about clothes you wanted to buy. Was the act of acquisition enough for you, or did you dwell on what such clothes might do for you? Would they add grace?
I could go on and on.
I was just wondering if it felt dangerous, thinking that fear might be part of the fun of it. I believe your answer is yes? I absolutely don't think it is "perverse to go on doing something that is difficult," or inappropriate, or generally not acceptable. People have reasons for doing the things they do, often very personal reasons. I find those unique reasons interesting.
DeleteColette: Above comment, should be "properly" not "improperly". Danger, when it presents itself, usually doesn't last long. Continuous danger is usually obvious and can be avoided. Improved technique means one is better equipped to cope. It's often difficult to distinguish between "dangerous terrain" and "difficult terrain". Interlinked hillocks, called "moguls" require a special technique and are often feared. But when one is feeling confident.... Well, if you've got the technique, why not give it a try? This perhaps comes under the heading of "calculated risk"..
DeleteThe penultimate paragraph of your post could, with a few word alterations, equally apply to motorcycling.
ReplyDeleteI still do it, why? My introduction to an activity that almost became life itself was as an essential means of transport for an impecunious squaddie to get home from barracks during National Service (there cannot be many of us left now since that finished in 1962). But somehow a bug bit me and the bite continued to fester until now.
A means of transport? No longer necessary as I have a small car which is more comfortable and weatherproof. The feeling of exhilaration and sheer joy? At 84 not longer experienced on the small machines I can now manage.
But I still go on. The gentle chug through the country side enabling me to take in more of the scenery than on a fast bike when all you saw was the road ahead. Looking after the machinery a hobby in itself.
But increasingly I am taking to ebikes for rides now.The sense of solitude enhanced by their quiet progress, when cycling the quiet lanes (there are still many available) becomes almost a meditation.
But I still experience joyfull anticipation when pushing a small. light motorcycle ot of the garage to take it on a completely unnecessary ride.
Avus: I emphasised sport's pointlessness.Transportation is not pointless. I'll give you "unnecessary rides" even though they require no skill and are purely passive activities. A variant of watching telly, alone, with a fan blowing in your face and occasional administrations from a watering can. Ski-ing is a skill and by improving one's skill one may alter one's relationship with the landscape. One may even say the intellect is involved since learning to ski is difficult and a large percentage of skiers never make it to the point where the benefits I outline can be experienced. Ski-ing is also horribly expensive (and has just become even more so with a huge increase in the cost of lift passes); strangely, this is not a deterrent, rather it promotes an appreciation of value that is absent in merely going for a spin. Risk also creates exhilaration (available on a bike, of course, but not if one is merely trundling), a brief excursion into a heightened view of things. Most important of all, the best ski-ing brings us into contact with people from other countries and in the end there's more potential for useful change with people than with a horizon. It's perhaps this that I miss most through old age, and especially now as desperation grows in our so-called Great Britain.
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