learning to squaw



top of siberia lift, squaw valley



growing up in oklahoma - "where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain" - i left skiing to the skiiers, and focused my attention on activities that required no mountains. 7 years in new york city only enhanced my incline-incompetency.  my skiing inadequacies went largely unnoticed - until i moved to san francisco.

this city is one with a unique vocabulary:  sandwich, translate, burrito. walking, translate, jogging.  driving, translate, biking.  cotton, translate, spandex.  summer, translate, never.  and since summer never happens, people make the most of the wintertime. on weekends, squaw becomes the new hamptons/long island/jersey shore/dewey beach; and le chamois, the new talkhouse.

eager to get a piece of the action, the boyfriend and i joined a ski house close to the lake, in tahoe city.  what could be better than weekends away, new friends, old friends, house parties... and skiing?  skiing, not so much.  having an i-have-skied-for-as-long-as-i-have-walked boyfriend doesn't help boost my confidence, either. but, with the help of lessons, i was/am determined to get better (note: physically impossible to get worse).  3 lessons later - my pizza wedge morphed magically into parallel form (with only hints of triangle). 

then, things took a turn for the worse.  the boyfriend met me after my last ski class and determined that i had graduated from belmont, links and east broadway (all greens) and that i was now ready for s i b e r i a.  i resisted, saying that me and my rental skis were not ready to go down a run that paid homage to one of the coldest, darkest, scariest locales of exile.  the boyfriend was encouraging and insisted that there was an "easy way down," and that "siberia would boost [my] confidence."  with my trust in his hand, i hesitantly got in the lift line.  how bad could  it be? 

bad.  i got off the at top and headed towards said "easy way down."  all i saw was a narrow path, with what seemed like infinity foot drop-offs on either side. my army green helmet was not enough for this battle.  the wind picked up and the ice started blowing. so, there i was, stranded, with the squaw valley under-8 ski team whooshing by me, one after another, bullet-style.  "petrified" and "embarrassed" did no justice in describing how i felt.  there i was:

with the wind howling,
with the ice blowing,

so, i did the only logical thing that would help me down the hill. 

i started to cry.

under my goggles, of course.