While still living in our home in Minneapolis, before our move to Fairmont, Mona and I joined a few neighbors on a week long sky trip to Big Sky Montana. We got there by train. The trip took 21 hours but we had lots of food and drinks and entertainment was provided as well.

Our chalet was exactly how I would envision a Swiss Chalet would look. It was made of logs with heavily sloped ceilings. We were just steps from the chair lifts that takes a skier to the mountains highest slope. I was with experienced skiers. I had only skied once before and that was on a bunny slope. Now I was to sit in a chair and rise somewhere above the clouds. Early our first full day, we all approached the lift, chose a chair and rose, what seemed like hours to me. After some long time I saw, coming in sight, a sign. Just before I could joy in the belief that I was reaching my destination, the sign came into focus. It read “halfway Point”. Oh my.

When we finally did reach the top, I found that the slopes surface was not very much like the hard surface of the bunny hill I had experienced. This was a deep powder. My legs would go in up to my crotch. Now I was, for the first time, expected to navigate this stuff on my new skies just purchased two weeks ago. I start at an angle in order to control my speed and then try to traverse but my skies snap off my boots because I don’t really know how to traverse. Now, I thought I was smart to get skies that, when they left my boots, would release a mechanism that would stop my skies in their tracks and not disappear down the hill. What I did not plan for was that there was nothing that stopped me from sliding for a while down the hill thus leaving my skies out of reach, way up - there.

Thanks to nice people around me, my skies were brought to me every time I fell, which was frequent. I thought, if I ever do get down I would never sky again. Four hours later, I reached the bottom but not before having to maneuver through “suicide run”, a narrow strip around one edge of the mountain cliff that you can’t avoid if you want to reach the bottom. As I slowly slipped around the mountain side edge, trying to avoid the large drop on the cliffs edge, many around me, probably impatient, I thought about how long it might be to get to my body if I went over that edge. But I did make it down and now, totally exhausted, my worry was - would I make it to the lunch before the place closed until dinner. I must have lost a lot of weight during this morning event and I needed sustenance. We made it with 3 minutes to spare. The next day I decided to take a series of sky lessons. After a few minutes of instruction I seemed to just “get it”. Everything worked. I could easily control my speed, traverse, stop. Life was good. I cancelled the rest of the lessons. I even won a race with my instructor traversing a number of poles. Full disclosure, he gave my quite a sizable head start.

One of the days, and confident of my new skills, I followed a young boy down a path through the woods. A few sharp turns later I came to an edge. The path just ended about five feet above the open area that was the next mountain run. I just left the ground, soared in the air for a while, and landed nicely on the area below. Had I had any warning at all as to what was ahead I doubt I would have made such a nice landing. My brain had not been given adequate time to panic.