Well, I went skiing yesterday for the first time in nine months.  This is a moment I have been waiting for since my last run on my last day of the last season of skiing.

I anticipated that is was going to be a hard day of skiing.  I have a brand new pair of boots and I was skiing in Stratton, a place I have never visited.  I eagerly went up the ski lift to the top of the mountain and looked for the first green, easy trail.  I started to ski and then had to stop.  I was too exhausted and my legs were burning.  I skied up a little further.  And then stopped again.  This pattern continued until I got to the bottom of the mountain.  A whole hour later.  I skied away wondering if I had ever even skied before.

I went up the ski lift again.  This time it only took me fifteen minutes to get down a rather long trail.  That was a bit better.  I figured four clean runs and I would attempt something a bit more difficult.  I went up the ski lift for a third try on the green trail.  I fiddled with my camera just long enough to watch a brand new pair of North Face gloves go down below the ski lift, never to be heard from again.  Skied down gloveless.  Skied again, gloveless because I am that kind of glutton for punishment.

Went down to the ski base, bought another pair of gloves.  I guess something about being in the warm air for a second convinced me that even though the ski gods were telling me otherwise, it was going to in fact be a good day for skiing.  Went up to the base of the top of the mountain, skied off the lift, immediately onto another lift that took forever to go to the top of the mountain.

Here is what I saw when I got to the top of the mountain.  Just breathtakingly beautiful:

Not only did I see this, but I also skied through it.  It was an intermediate track that led into a black diamond.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with ski lingo, black diamond indicates the highest level of difficultly in ski terrain.  We aren’t talking that kind of skiing when a person is dropped out of a helicopter and is ready to ski, but rather steep terrain that involves a lot of control.

Black diamonds have scared me and I continually said to myself that I wouldn’t ski one until I had been skiing for five, no maybe ten years.  Turns out black diamond day was yesterday.  I knew as soon as I entered the black diamond area.  It was steeper than anything else I had ever experienced but somehow and I don’t know how, I told myself I could do it.  I could navigate it.  I could hold it together long enough to get to the bottom.

And I did.  I could not believe I had skied over something that difficult on my first day back. I have the pain today to prove it, but somehow skiing the black diamond has made me believe that you never know until you try.  Not trying is worse than failing.  If you fail, at least you tried.  If you didn’t try…