Prompt #54: New Beginnings

January 2023

Hi Friends,

When I was 20, I moved to the mountains in Colorado to teach skiing for a season and ended up going back every winter for the next 10 years. I went to college and then graduate school during the spring, summer, and fall (Cal Poly, SLO was on the quarter system), and I moved back to the Vail area every winter to teach skiing and work as a waitress, which was how I helped fund my college career.

Even though I began skiing when I was about seven, I lived in Southern California and was only able to ski a few times a year, so I wasn’t a very good skier when I started, but as it turns out you don’t have to be a great skier to teach little kids how to make a pizza and French fries (wedge and parallel). But I lOVED skiing more than anything on the planet and took every clinic and started to train for the various levels of ski instructor certifications and accreditations. As I became an expert, I spent more time thinking about how my skiing looked, and it started to ruin things for me, because some days are always better than others (true of every sport) and I was unhappy on my off days.

I adore snow and sliding across it, so I knew I had to do something to fall back in love, and I figured out what I needed to do.