How to Ski With a Broken Heart
By LISA SHATFORD

I.

There was never a time when you weren't there somewhere, waiting at the top of the chair, just one mountain over. In every sharply drawn tree line, and over each crest; on the side of all the pitches I have skied, and at the end of each ragged trail. There you were behind each closing gondola door, just beyond the turn in all the lift line mazes, three chairs ahead of me on every lift I ever rode. You were the keynote in every yodeling echo, just over there beyond the dip. Every detour on the trail map made you righter, slightly nearer, more like home.

I was missing all the signs until now, looking for the diamonds rather than the easy greens. I guess I needed lots of injuries to know what it would feel like not to ache; to understand the opposite of struggling on the wrong edge. To believe that extending in the right direction makes for effortless flight and that going with gravity brings a lark into my hand. To be able to truly see the markers that guide me down the mountain in a storm, right into your marmot arms. After all of my flimsy and unsettled homes, here is one of metaphysical brick, that sits on any mountain that you ride.

Through the gathering momentum and wisdom earned from rope tow burns and T-bar tumbles, and a million broken hearts, I knew you were always there, only one run over, bouncing toward me. In every second ticking over on the clock, in every lift ticket sold on each snowy day, in all the wet-heavy clouds, on each flight schedule to the west, there you were. You could have been any duct-taped bum in any lift line and I would have known you. If I had saved all my heart’s squanderings, I would have what you deserve and I would rub your feet at the end of every ski day, until there were 100.


II.

On this epic blue morning in early December when you feel like you are stealing a secret, you notice once again how the mountain swallows up your knots and opens up your wonder. Winds of psalms gust through your heart. You stand in a jagged stunning cathedral, a life reminder, a check of time, and you feel your best self flying strong.

And last night you noticed how they are still all young and hard and sweet, like the ones you dreamed of then who held you tight and hold you now. To feel that again–how heaven is–fills you up to almost tears. To remember the steely innocence of ski boys; how they feel, how they smell, and how that is lost in all but time.

You dance that nostalgia at a filmy distance in a western ski bar with a sweet drunk boy, close but twice removed from forever and your true north; the way you didn't go. A pulse of regret, a tingly ache for yesterday and a wish for another chance to try to dance it right. Right down the mountain road to the cabin where the iron drips wax onto empty beer cases.

Right down the right path to the right place to be, under a cascade of stars looking down at the children of regret and sending the guts to move them forward to the mountains of their youth where they can stay up high and clear and never turn their gaze nor waver from the right line.

How to get back there from here consumes and fires you. You keep trying to fly yourself home.


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