Louis Roney: On the slopes

Bill and I had ridden the day coach all the way from Boston to Walpole, N.H., where we had rented a room and bath. I had never been skiing before, and Bill’s winter experience was solely as an ice-skater. He had taught school for a year in Platte City, Mo., in order to earn money to go to Harvard, and had often ice-skated his way up the frozen Platte River to the school.

The many ski slopes with their ropes and ski lifts had enticed us in Cambridge with the same kind of attraction that Sir Edmund Hillary must have experienced with Mount Everest.

Pretty soon we were off to the business of skiing for the first time. In Cambridge I had borrowed a pair of skis and some boots considerably too large for me, and I decided to stuff newspaper in them to take up the extra space. I had no ski poles, but found I could rent a pair for a dollar a day. So equipped, the Florida boy takes his first chances at breaking his neck on the icy New Hampshire slopes.

People who were real skiers were whizzing past me 20 yards away and managing to miss trees that could have maimed or killed them. We learned that same day a quite well known musical performer had been among the unlucky ones who ended his days colliding with a tree.

I was cagey enough to recognize that the kiddie-slopes were the only place for people who were not experts. I would fall into the hard-packed snow at the end of every short run. Even little kids ages 4 and 5 were passing me like express trains. Learning to ski is intimidating. My first job was how to stop without falling, and before I crashed into something hard — harder than human flesh, that is! — like an oak tree.

I don’t know what it is about doing dangerous things that attracts so many otherwise “sane” people. We drive our cars very carefully all the way to the ski slopes and then put ourselves in a most perilous situation, one that could lead to the end of it all for us. When one is standing up and looking down at the end of his skis, they don’t look overly dangerous, but when we consider that our foot is supposed to pivot and move a 5- or 6-foot length of ski, that becomes another matter altogether. A ski boot attached to a long ski is not a judicious place for a human foot to be — unless one is crazy about skiing or just plain crazy. Nevertheless as we are to so many whacko things, we are devoted to risking it all on the slopes — and if one is really good, on a trail.

If you survive a trip through a tree-laden trail, and are not suspicious about bragging, let me know.

Bill, being a much more skilled and natural athlete than I, was off to bigger and better trails and accomplishments.

I finally figured out how to stop safely and decided to brave a slope requiring a more adventurous attitude.

From the top of the hill, people at the bottom looked like tiny dolls skimming about. Could I really do this? Gravity alone was the force that would integrate me with the crowd below, so I put myself at the service of “the force” and started down the hill. Life got more and more precious as my skis hurled me down the slope. Believe me, I prayed all the way down — and gave thanks profusely as I slid to the bottom. I had survived the hill! I actually skied! I conquered my Mount Everest!

In the safety of my home state of Florida, I’ve thought a lot about my skiing experience – and alligators just don’t seem so threatening anymore.