It’s the seventh Saturday of the Eight-Week Program, and we’re stuck down at Sealevel for work. It’s also my son Luke’s eighth birthday. Already resigned to a no-ski day, I’m hoping to sleep in, at least till 7:30 or so. Luke, however, has other plans. In the pale gray light of dawn, he wakes me up, going, “Daddy, Daddy! I just had the awesome-est dream!” It’s 6:10, and I’m not ready for coffee, let alone second-hand dreams. He interprets my grunt as affirmation to continue, though, and says, “I was skiing in the powder in the trees? And there were trees that were down, like in the middle of the moguls, and we were jumping over them. It was so sick!”
“Maybe if you go back to sleep, you can get back into your dream,” I mumble.
“No, Dad. You can’t just go back into a dream. Jeez.”
Hours later, he’s watching Scooby Doo, an episode set in a snow-covered expanse in what has to be the Himalayas. A yeti, who turns out to be a robot driven by a girl who looks sort of Tibetan, chases our heroes down massive, open bowls of powder. I ask Luke to tell me again about his dream—was he jumping the fallen tree trunks, or was he riding them, like rails? “More like rails and ski jumps,” he says, a look of far-off wonder in his eye. “We were really high up in the air.”
It’s funny; in my Hippie Literature class, an elective for high school seniors, I’ve been lecturing for the past ten days about Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, and the Grateful Dead—cosmic connections, now-almost-clichéd allegories like “You’re either on the bus or off the bus” and “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Then, seemingly out of the blue, my son has his first skiing dream, at the exact time we would normally wake up for a Jay day. Can you say synchronicity?
Rewind until two weeks ago, when I went to collect Luke from the Shred Shack, the base for the Eight-Week Program. I was a few minutes late, so most of the other kids had already split. Rolling around, mostly on the big piece of PVC tubing that’s half-submerged in the snow, are Luke and another kid, both in helmets and ski boots. At first, it looks like they’re locked in a death match, jiu-jitsu on the funpipe, but I quickly realize they’re just playing. Satisfied that the program has fulfilled one of its goals—to create ski buddies amongst the young shredders—I turn my attention to the boys’ instructor, Josh and promptly learn that my kid has spent the day in the woods, hunting precious powder, turning on to secret unmarked glades that I’ve never skied. “He’ll be able to show you a whole new mountain,” says Josh.
Later, on the drive home, Luke tells us, “That was the best day ever.”
“Ever?” says Yupin.
“Best day of skiing in my whole life.”
“Better than when you won that race with Phil?”
“Um. Yep.” He then goes on to tell us everything he’s supposed to, as if he’s reading from a script: the powder, the bumps, the trees, hanging with his new buds on the chairlift.
“I didn’t think I liked moguls,” he says, “but the ones in Beaver Pond are awesome.”
He’s beginning to use that word a lot. That and “sick.” It makes the English teacher in me very very proud.
A greater source of pride is the fact that not a year ago, the only woods that Luke skied were in the Moonwalk and Bushwacker range. Now he’s skiing my terrain. It’s only a matter of time before he moves beyond me, so it’s good that he’s making ski buddies up here. They’ll have the whole mountain before we know it.
When we headed up again the following weekend (the Saturday before his birthday dream of skiing) I didn’t have many expectations. How do you top the best day ever? There wasn’t as much fresh snow, the wind was stronger, and the sun wasn’t nearly as beamy. Conditions looked to be hard and fast; the woods would be more skied out. I didn’t anticipate long tales of stashes and secret runs.
But at the end of lessons, the report was similar to that of the previous week. Instructor Josh told of Green Beret. “At first Luke fell near the top and lost a ski. But then he put it back on. I thought he was going to be a little tentative going down, but he then just ripped it. He really started putting his turns together.”
Ripping Green Beret! I know it’s a familiar metaphor, but all I could think of was salmon. I actually made a jumping movement with my hand, telling Josh, “So he’s made a leap.”
On the way home, it was déjà vu all over again when I asked Luke about the skiing.
“Best day ever,” he said.
“You said that last week,” I protested.
“Yeah, well, this was even funner.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know. Green Beret?”
Part of it’s his age, I’m sure, because he still lives mostly in the now; thus every new great experience is the best. But another part is the result of rapid progress. When you’re taking on amazing new trails and learning new skills, of course each day is going to be better than the last. Skiing begins to flow, like inspiration, creativity. There are special forces at work here, whether we’re aware of them or not; as we progress in any snow sport, we’re becoming like dancers—living, physical art.
So it should be no wonder that a week after his jump to Green Beret, on the heels of his two best ski days ever, Luke has his first real skiing dream. I still think it’s pretty far out, though, that it pops up the day after my lecture on the group mind of the Grateful Dead. It’s as though his consciousness has connected into the mountain-sports collective, that somehow his lessons have developed not only his confidence and technique, but taken him Furthur. No doubt about it, this Eight-Week Program has been the ticket to ride the magic bus.
