We made it back up to the mountain this morning for a quick ski. T skied from the car across the snow park and about 20 m down the trail. Not far, probably 100m total, but the farthest she's gone yet. Better, she seemed pretty excited. Well, not excited, but focused and happy. When she fell, she figured out how to untangle skis and self. When her skis crossed, she got them uncrossed (not on the first try, but without frustration). I like watching her hit these problems. She has an uncanny amount of patience with a problem for a 2.5 yr old. I try not to fix everything for her when we first start out because I don't want to cheat her of a challenge. Later because I want to see what she'll come up with next. Still later it's because I just can't believe she's still going at it. By the time she says, "I need some help", I feel I'm about to burst.
She's better than most people I've seen on their first cross-country outings, and better than myself on most days, in most situations.
After she started to get tired, I talked her into skiing to a little fallen branch, we had some chocolate. This was almost an out-of-body experience for me, because I remember so many time my dad would talk me into going just a bit farther before sitting down, and then the chocolate would come out. The role reversal was sharp enough to give me double vision- me and dad, me as dad.
After a section of Tobblerone, we popped T into a backpack, and K figured out how to strap T's skiis to the pack, and we dropped down into a little valley trail. T always wants to go faster- this is a real problem with having her go with LJ our first time out. But LJ doesn't crash, and my crashes were the things of song and story. Now, with T strapped to me, I've become so cautious. Children make you old. It's odd to worry about wadding after so many years of not caring- I used to figure that breaking stuff was bad, because things (skis, derailleurs, surfboards) cost money, but the body heals for free. But the last couple times I've tested my body's healing powers, I've not been keen on the rate or the quality of the healing. I worry that this new caution will become habitual, and that by the time she's ready to throw herself at the world, I'll have forgotten how.
We made it to the bottom of the trail, and while K and I were putting skins on, and T was discovering the magic of peeing in snow, a string of cowboys came up the trail looking for a missing bull. It made T's day; the smell of old hay, sound of heavy, sealion-like breathing, and the squeaking of heavy leather- all the things that go with horses. And the guys- leather chaps, grey walrus moustaches, big felt hats- T's eyes were like dinner plates. Nice little surprise meeting.
Almost back to the trailhead, there's a section of trail where the trees open up, and one faces right up the summit of Mt. Hood. I was pointing out bits of geology for T with my skipole, more of a running commentary for her distraction than for pedagogical purposes, and she says, "Let's climb it!". So I do the whole explanation of perspective - that things can look close when they're close, or when they're surprisingly large, and here we're sort of functionally more in the second case. So T mulls this over and says, "When I'm older, older, can we climb it?"
Hell yes.
