I make notes. Jot them down after I ski. Nothing special, just a few words, an observation or two, a reference perhaps to time or distance skied. It is not a formal process for me. I have no rigid structure to note wax used, pulse rate maintained, miles or total time. I did that years ago when my goal was to ski long and fast. Today I sometimes stumble across an old training journal, page through it and wonder about where I was then and where I am today. I should throw them away but I don’t. They have become mementos of a time and a place and a life now changed.

I keep notes today not to measure progress in terms of pace and intensity or training hours elapsed but to remind me in the off-season what it’s like to ski. I sometimes need to write about it, often for this magazine. I turn on the computer, scroll through my notes and remind myself of what it was like to ski in December, in January’s cold and as spring approached in February and March.

In days of summer heat or autumnal splendor, in times when the ground lies bare of snow, I read my notes. I read them also during the winter, during the ski season, during the time now at hand. I check them as the ski season passes as I’m curious how many times I’ve skied to date.

Years ago I became aware that I needed to be on skis 15 times in a season before I felt totally comfortable skiing. It takes me about that long to get my timing and balance and snap on uphills. Of course I also wonder if it isn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy: Do I ski better after 15 outings because I believe I will? My notes don’t say.

But more than that I look at the notes to remind me of skiing and see if I can take lessons from it in any way. I look for insight or inspiration or another way of looking at the sport. Sometimes my notes provide an atypical perspective and only in rereading them do I recall why.

Here’s an example:

December 6, 2007

Later in the week (a friend) skis Cassian Lake trail and sees blood on the trail. Then guts. A deer hunter has gutted his deer on the trail and the groomer has run over it and ground it in. Only in Wisconsin.

“Only in Wisconsin?” I probably kid myself given the similar deer hunting traditions in Michigan and Minnesota.

My notes are not elaborate or lengthy unless I am so moved. Most often they are written in the minutes after I arrive home as I sit at the computer damp with sweat before the chills set in and a hot shower beckons.

December 16, 2007

Off skis for 10 days; had a damn kidney stone, a buying show, work. Now out for an hour before work on Sunday. Golf course and no new snow since last time. Tracks marginal but not bad. I’ve seen worse. Skied easy and felt fine. Saw a fisher and no other skiers. Nice. Off to work.

January 9, 2008

Aftermath of thaw and hard crust, ice, dirty track. No kick at all and quit nearly as soon as I’d started.

That last entry, by the way, tells far less in the writing than the happening. We’d gotten a thaw and then a freeze and the track was indeed hard and crusty. The trailhead is in a pine plantation and the trail that day was covered in pine needles, bark shards and junk. I skied less in terms of time than it will take you to read this paragraph. I got the kick wax all wrong (but because I didn’t note what I used I have no way of learning from the experience). I had no grip whatsoever on the flat section of track that leads out from the parking lot. I was very unhappy, but I will spare you details.

The notes (which I actually file as “ski musings,” which make them seem less pretentious) have, unexpectedly, led me in unanticipated directions. I find that my memory is not distinct, that it often doesn’t jibe with reality. To wit, my memory glosses over things and paints them far rosier. The notes I take remind me of what it is really like.

I wonder if that’s unique to me. I suspect not. Memory is the mind’s great jester, tricking us all with false recollection and fraudulent recall.

I have, in the heat of summer, in the cool of October, even in the spring warmth of March, held an image of skiing that is unconditionally favorable. I’m not saying I remember only day after day of perfect snow, sunny skies and wonderful glide. I do not delude myself into thinking that. But my memory drifts in that direction. I do tend to forget the down days, the days when the skiing does not go well. Then I read my notes.

January 1, 2008

New Years Day. Washburn Lake. Start and stop, start and stop, repeat. Coming off a bad cold and no energy. Really just going through the motions with no incentive to ski.

Washburn January 16, 2008

Wednesday, a day off. Very, very slow start. Just did not have it. Lots of stops; not much snap at all. Discouraged and emotionally flat.

January 27, 2008

First time out in a week. Not a quality outing. Have not gotten into a ski routine this year. Nothing seems in rhythm now. Everything seems disjointed.

I remember in reading my quickly jotted notes that skiing is not all days of perfection and times wonderful and fulfilling. Not even close. Skiing is, when one thinks of it, much like our lives away from skiing. On any given day we may stumble and fall, figuratively or literally, and make fitful starts and stops at work, feel generally out of sorts and off kilter. Why would we expect sports, recreation, skiing, to be any different?

We often see recreation and real life as separate, the one being an escape from the other. I don’t think they should be. More and more I believe they cannot be separated. A good day skiing can lead us to a good day when we are off skis. Do well in one and you will likely do well in the other. Carry the burden of one part and you will feel it in the other.

Skiing is not a panacea for life’s burdens. Recreation is not an escape from life but merely a different venue in which we play the game.

Golf Course January 20, 2008

Skied before work and temp at 16 below zero when I left home. Clear and sunny. A beautiful morning and I skied for an hour. Slow. Very slow. But an uplifting time on snow and a reminder of why I love to ski and really love to ski in the cold. It is a wonderful thing, and I felt good all day for having done it.

“Felt good all day for having done it.” That, I contend, is the true goal, the true value of sport and skiing. And we should wish it no other way.

Mitch Mode started cross-country skiing some 35 years ago. He has skied every Birkie since 1978 but no longer races. He is the co-owner of Mel’s Trading Post, a sporting goods store in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, named after his late father who started the business in 1946.

top of page