Photo:
Grant Gunderson

See also Contest 01: Chairlift Encounter

See also Contest 02: Panic

See also Contest 03: Squalor

Embryonic Journey
By BILL EMMETT

Heading out the door to high school on that cool September morning of '68, I get my first glimpse of a few red and orange maples on the hillside. The rest of the school day is a blur of blue sky as I ignore whatever quadratic equation Mr. Bradford is chalking on the board in favor of diligently scanning the room's only window for evidence of some kind of moisture moving down from the northern Pacific. Something white and cold. That first flake. Glorious winter.

So begins my continual downward spiral of vicarious skiing pleasure. Late nights alone in my room, with Jefferson Airplane on the turntable, I try to sate my skiing appetite with September and October issues of SKI and SKIING magazines. I read the articles and drool at the photos. As October rolls around I'm off to the high school auditorium for Warren Miller's vision of winter splendor in Sun Valley. It's so good that I convince my dad that the family needs to ski there this winter.

By Halloween I'm shaking with anticipation. An early storm brings first snow to Beaver Mountain and Dave and I trick-and-treat for three hours on four gloppy inches, dodging rocks, bushes, and a dead deer. November comes around and I spend hours staring at the metallic beauty of my recently purchased Fischer Alu Combi skis, oblivious to food, homework, or human companionship. Autumn, moving slower than an LBJ press conference, has become a major irritant to me, an ankle hot-spot in the Lange boot of life. I know that I will forever ache for winter.

Today, years removed from my anxious youth, I indeed ache, but the pain comes from a bushel of tomatoes that my wife and I are peeling, chopping, and mixing with onions and peppers for our yearly salsa bottling fiesta. Tomato juice splatters the counter and floor. Capsaicin burns my fingers. Thirty-four quarts already line our pantry.

I gaze out the kitchen window at my garden, brimming with green tomatoes, a sharp contrast to the red maples along the foothills. I desperately scan the sky, hoping for one more week of warm weather. It can't snow yet. I can get another 15 quarts if it doesn't freeze. The phone rings. Steve tells me my new Dynastars have arrived at the store and they look great. I say fine, just put them in the back, I'll pick them up later, and then hang up before Steve can question my sanity. He's still one of those who spends his fall clomping around in his Salomons, watching TGR and MSP leftovers, cursing the autumn sun. "Silly kid," I mutter to myself as I gingerly slice another Habanero.

Later that afternoon, bottles cooling on the counter, Lorie and I relax on the deck, reveling in the lingering warmth of the late September afternoon. Tomorrow we'll watch my nephew tackle opposing running backs. Next week, perhaps a bike ride on the Logan River Trail, or maybe a drive with the grandkids up Sardine Canyon. I realize that Fall is to be praised, not painfully endured. Crisp air, crisp apples, crisp forward passes. That's the proper prelude to skiing.

Let autumn linger. Winter, like that big present under the Christmas tree, will be opened soon enough.

                                                                                        Next: number 3


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