I was 11 the Christmas my mother gave me my own pair of skis and told me she was taking me to Taos. I had never been skiing and I was very excited. I can’t remember if it was a business trip, but I think it probably was. Most of my childhood travel that didn’t involve visiting relatives involved tagging along with my mom on business.
Taos was having a bad year for snow. The base was thin, the snow icy and old. Not that this probably mattered to an 11 year old who had never done this before, but the fact does stand out in my memory. I think we drove in from Albuquerque, probably with my mom’s friend J.E. and her toddler daughter, both of whom alternately had my affection, envy, and contempt. This might have been the same trip…or maybe it was a different trip… where we stayed in one of my mom’s lawyer buddy’s cabins. I remember showing off for the toddler in the snow, and my mom getting cranky when the car would get stuck.
The morning arrived, and we hit the slopes. To be more accurate, my mom and J.E. hit the slopes, the kid probably went to daycare—I have no memory of this—and I hit the Ski School first time kiddie class. Well, not the really little kiddie class, but close enough. The slope was about as steep as a Florida driveway. And it was terrifying. We learned how to snowplow. We learned how to snowplow and turn to the right. We learned how to snowplow and turn to the left. We used one of those horrible tow bars to reach the “top” of this “hill” and snowplow down. Most importantly—and this comes up again later—we learned how to fall over in case we got out of control.
It was exhilarating. After a couple of hours of skidding clumsily down this 50 foot stretch of packed and crusty snow, we were taken down the more official bunny slope. This was to the left of the ski school, looking up hill. To the left of that was the ski lodge, where idle snacking skiers could watch the antics of the fledgling skiers as we tumbled down to the base of the hill.
Between the ski school area and the bunny slope was an orange mesh fence, at the top of which was a bank of snow that made a mildly steep ramp that several people had carved up trying to get some small semblance of speed on the shallow hill. My third or fourth time down, I decided to risk it.
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— 02:52:45 AM
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