Skiing Alone

At 4:45 PM on Friday, just as my regular-job, seizing-their-youth contemporaries are snapping their MacBooks shut in sleek offices downtown and making thrilling plans for the evening, I am swinging onto a cold, creaking ski lift Snoqualmie Pass. At a cool 52 miles from Seattle, this is the pass of choice for the most frugal Seattle students, who can manage to afford passage for the season on the ski bus, but not the ski bus that takes them to Stevens Pass, which most of them prefer. So here we are, the last ski bus of the year, bussing all the way into March because of some avalanches and some breaks earlier in the season. It's still miraculously light as I slide away from the grim chaperone lounge and onto Holiday, a painfully slow lift designed for toddlers, which I only take once a Friday because I am too lazy to walk up the hill to the other lifts.

It's a soft, grey sort of day. The sky is every shade of wooly cloud, only shaded yellow toward the western bottom of it, and the air is above freezing and rain-free, which makes it feel warm, though probably it's not above 35 degrees. The snow is soft but not wet, much more forgiving than ice and far less trouble than powder. I sigh with relief on this wretched, crawling little lift. Though I usually complain about this ski bus chaperoning to an extent that reasonably exhausts everyone around me ("No, I wish I could go. But I have to go skiing. I know, so annoying. And it's like, every Friday, man!"), today I'm happy for several reasons.

I'm happy because this is my fifth time skiing this season. This is five times as much as I've ever skied in a single season before. This means that I am actually getting better at it, and that maybe next winter, when I try again to ski with my maniacal skiing dad, I won't be left as miserably in the dust as usual. I anticipate the next few hours with pleasure and even some confidence. The confidence, I confess, is related to the second reason I'm happy.

I'm happy because I'm alone. I not only have a skiing complex, this painful insecurity about this and a long list of other athletic activities, but I have a Friday complex. The details are sketchy, but they involve me being terribly taciturn and not terribly interesting on Fridays. I don't like to make friends on Fridays; on Fridays, I have trouble managing the ones that I already have. So here I am, skiing in solitude, with my iPod and my developing skills, living the picture of isolation that I lament in our society and loving it. This delight in solitude leads me to the final reason for being happy.

I'm happy because this day has been terrible so far. I suspect, also, that this has been mostly my fault.

Every day, I come to school with this invisible hat on my head. The hat is made of rubber, or maybe thick, quilted cloth, and it flexes and bends throughout the day, absorbing blows and muffling sounds and generally keeping me alive and laughing by the time the last bell rings. I have a long fuse and a higher tolerance level than most for the little annoying things that tend to drive my colleagues to distraction. The forgotten pencils, the repeated directions, the background chatter I take in stride, remembering that I was a kid once, too.

Today, though, the invisible hat was made out of aluminum. Every noise echoed. Every comment made a permanent dent. I spent the day in self-conscious irritation, both at them for being annoying, and at myself for letting them annoy me. I watched again and again, like a horrified spectator, the collision of absent-minded teenagers and their tired teacher, but seemed helpless to change it. I think most of us had a dreadful day.

So I ride the lifts all night, alone and contemplative and already penitent. I'm vowing to do better on Monday, and wondering how. Probably a weekend of rest will help. I'm listening to the banter of teenagers and getting irritated, but at the same time being thankful that my students, whatever their faults, are not as bad as these ones. Not the vile, vulgar rants, nor the shouting across rooms with wild motions and over-the-top theatrics. My students aren't like this. Or maybe they are sometimes, but I know them. I understand when they are just having a bad day or showing off for someone or genuinely making dreadful decisions, know that they are not awful all the time, or even most of the time. I know that most of them--all of them, actually--are bright and try to do the right thing, and are every day learning, whether or not they like it, what that right thing is and how to do it.

And I think, encouraged at the end of this defeating day, that they know me, also. Warmed by the hope of redemption, I turn up the music, look out at the dark, sleepy mountains, and slosh my way down the thick, wet slopes of spring.