Jill Malone

I’ve just watched a documentary about extreme winter sports: Warren Miller’s Playground.  Skiers cliff diving, half-pipe jumping, snowboarding into trees, parachuting down the north face of Alaskan mountains, etc. Sweet, terrifying athleticism. I am so not extreme. I never caught a wave over eight feet. Whenever I mountain biked in the back country, I hit a tree. I sucked at skateboarding because I was afraid of crashing (most especially down stairs). Two days ago, Gavin and I jumped off the deck into the peaked snow of the backyard, and that was about as extreme as I get anymore. 

But I enjoy the thrill of it. The iron burn of your lungs during a sprint. That electric fever when you crouch on your board. The terror of your back tire sliding away as you blitz down a path. It’s not that they’re fearless, of course; fear is part of the momentum, and an element of the reverence. 

I’m more prone, in my thirties, to delight in my life. That childlike delight that adolescence is supposed to crush out has been rekindled now and is brighter, I think, than ever. Maybe some part of it is memory—the pleasure of comparison, and past achievement, but another part is simpler still: I am aware of my mortality, as I could not have been in childhood, so living—living!—is a gift. 

The sleds of our youth are German: a sweet wooden one with a multi-colored webbed seat, and curled runners; and a racing car of red plastic with a sophisticated steering mechanism that includes a wheel and horn. Yesterday my brother and I humped these up Howard Street in addition to my son on his new inner tube. 

The inner tube is fast beyond all reckoning–riding up the snow burm, spinning in wild circles, whooshing down the hill. We caught air. We slid through the intersections and blew our caps off. 

On the German sleds, we crashed. Toppled sideways, came to abrupt halts on the exposed brick of the street, our overly large selves tucked up like canon balls.

By the third run, Gavin, in his latest mantra, proclaimed he’d do it himself, and on the wooden sled, raced down the hill, crashed midway, righted himself, and raced the rest. Then he dragged the sled back up and plunged again.

Our faces chapped, our gloves a burden, the day sunny and crisp. Even these short sprints are a pleasure—quickly renewed—until each of us is sprawled lazily on the ground, staring into the trees as though it were August.

My four year old is a random trekking companion. But two days ago, we walked for miles through the snow paths and side streets of the South Hill, while Gavin told a story of an avalanche that buried cars and houses and trees. 

Groups of young men with shovels were moving up and down the hill, digging people’s cars out, and excavating driveways. We watched any number of cars get stuck, and neighbors come running out to push and pull and get them on their way. It was the best of us, and the world hushed and beautiful. 

At dusk, he told me to stop and then said, “We’re blue. Everything is blue.” And he was right, the winter light had blued the maples, a guy with a snow blower, the bungalow houses, and both of us, in our boots in the middle of the road. We stood admiring the unlikely day—the way that everything had come to a solemn halt—and then we meandered down another side street, stalled a bit longer as the blue blackened around us.