Adventures on an Angry Edge

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I may have mentioned this before, but I like variety. I like trying new things and discovering cool stuff. And you know what? When necessary, I'm prepared to take something of a beating in order to experience these things. Sometimes, such as when I decided to take up snowboarding this winter, that willingness is sorely tested.

...the mountain is quick to serve up the suffering required on any spiritual journey

It all starts at a little local ski hill. Normally I'm pretty resistant to the idea of actually taking lessons, but they're offering a one-hour "Introduction to Snowboarding" course for virtually nothing, so my friend Skip and I decide to try that first. In retrospect it wasn't a bad idea, but it wasn't a great one either.

You see, the course itself was good and useful but the hill had two fatal flaws. It was composed entirely of ice, with a thin dust of snow on it, and it was on a very gentle angle. The problem, it seems, with low angled slopes is that it makes it kind of difficult to keep the board up on one edge. When your board isn't up on one edge, there is a strong tendency for bumps in the snow, of which there are many, to catch one of the edges, with unsettling results. As someone pointed out to me, if you don't choose an edge, nature will choose one for you.

The net result of all this is that I catch my edge a lot, which results in me being thrown violently on the ground. Since the ground consists entirely of ice, the effect is more demanding than I'd planned on. For the course of our one hour lesson we frantically (although slowly) ride amidst the wildly veering, unpredictably turning, hordes of small children and uncoordinated adults who haunt the bunny hill, being repeatedly slapped on the glacial ground by the merciless agent of the devil that is my rental snowboard.

Presto-chango, it's a clear, cool day at Lake Louise and I am on a spiritual journey. I read somewhere that in earlier times, when the native Indians wanted to seek wisdom or guidance, they would go off into the wilderness and fast until knowledge came to them in the form of visions. On this day, I too am seeking wisdom through pain and suffering in the outdoors. With only 1½ hours of practice, because too much preparation is bad for the character, I've headed to the mountains with Flip for some real snowboarding action.

I'm not exactly fasting, but the mountain is quick to serve up the suffering required on any spiritual journey, and the mercilessly solid "packed powder" is collecting a toll payable in bone fragments. As much as possible, I avoid the sinus clearing violence of the low-angled green runs, however, in spite of this small caution the mountain treats me unkindly and I am battered about like popcorn in a microwave bag. I discover that even getting off of the chair lift is surprisingly hazardous, because you have to have one foot unstrapped from the board, which makes steering kind of tricky. A number of skiers selflessly give their lives to soften my falls during lift dismounts. They seem uninterested in my gratitude, so I move on.

I think that it was Newton who said that an object in motion will remain in motion unless an outside force acts on it. At some point in the day, an outside force acts on me and I find myself, suddenly, at rest. As I gather my wits and wipe the snow off of my face, a strangely familiar odour reaches my nose. I'm momentarily confused and then recognise the oily scent of scotch. A sneaking suspicion crosses my mind and I reach for the inside pocket of my jacket, where my flask is stored. The area is wet. Very wet.

After I get the cap on my flask properly sealed again, I head on down the hill and join the lift line where, to my considerable surprise, two police officers are now standing with the lifties who are checking tickets. I start to feel self-conscious.