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2024-02-19
During a family holiday last week to the Three Valleys region of the French Alps for some skiing, I came to see that I enjoy a privilege I call the freedom of the mountain.
The freedom of the mountain is a privilege that comes from having the level of experience necessary to take on virtually any run a resort has to offer. It provides a handful of benefits denied to less-confident skiers:
An Alpine glacier near where I was skiing.
The downside is that I'm less well-equipped to consider the needs of others! Out skiing with Ruth one morning I suggested a route back into town that "felt easy" based on my previous runs, only to have her tell me that - according to the map - it probably wasn't!
The kids spent the week in lessons. It's paying off: they're both improving fast, and the eldest has got all the essentials down and it's working on improving her parallel turns and on "reading the mountain". It's absolutely possible that the eldest, and perhaps both of them, will be a better skier than me someday (Assuming snow is still a thing in ten years time.).
Maybe, as part of my effort to do what I'm bad at, I should have another go at learning to snowboard. I always found snowboarding frustrating because everything I needed to re-learn was something that I could already do much better and easier on skis. But perhaps if I can reframe that frustration through the lens of learning itself as the destination, I might be in a better place. One to consider for next time I hit the piste.
My blog post: "Do What You're Bad At"
My blog posy about finding the GCADXC6 "Tour de France" geocache
My blog note about playing Where's Wally? on the mountainside
