By Carolyn Boston, February 18, 2021 — Several years ago I was invited to go on a ski trip with my aunt to upstate New York to the Wallkill Ski Resort. I had never been skiing and was excited to have the experience. When we arrived at the mountain, the snow was falling quietly and the air was hushed as the snowflakes fell to the ground. I loved the beauty of the mountain and the sight of avid skiers zooming past me. What struck me the most was that there were hundreds of young children among the adults who were skiing amazingly well on the ice. They almost looked like they were performing at the Olympics.
My aunt and I went to the lodge to put on our skis. The ski boots were difficult for me to manage because my ankles were weak.
We headed out to the slopes to get instruction on to manage the skis and the poles on the ice. My aunt had been skiing many times and was familiar with how to maneuver the slopes. When we went out to start learning how to ski I had brought my pocketbook with me and my aunt said to me, “What are you doing with your pocketbook? You need to put it in a locker.” I said, “That’s okay I’ll just put it around my neck.”
As the ski instructor showed me how to step from side to side I demonstrated back to him what he had shown me. As I took another side step forward something happened. All of a sudden I started to move, and when I say move I mean move.
I was skiing down the slope in front of me so fast that it felt like I was going 90 miles an hour. I heard myself screaming at the top of my lungs. In a panic, I started reaching for anybody to help me break my fall. All of my targets skied away quickly. Down the first slope, I went continuously screaming and picking up even greater speed. I heard peals of laughter behind me plus a familiar voice, my aunt being the loudest. I started praying, calling on everybody in Heaven to save me. I heard a voice say, I don’t know if it was my instructor, “Use your poles, use your poles.”
I kept saying to myself, “I’m going to die, I’m going to die.” I started jamming the poles into the snow but I pushed them so hard into the snow that they curved and I broke them. I couldn’t use them, they were all curved and I was screaming, I was crazy. The hysterical laughter got louder and louder behind me.
All of a sudden a cliff appeared ahead of me. It looked ominous. I saw myself going over it and plunging to my death. I screamed loud in terror and lost my voice.
Suddenly, there appeared a miracle. There was a barn or a small lodge ahead of me. I picked up supersonic speed, I saw two huge trash cans. The next thing that happened, I plunged headfirst into the trashcan, skis sticking out of the top.
Finally, my instructor and my aunt came to assist me out of the trashcan. The instructor tried to control his laughter and I saw the sides of his lips trembling as he tried to gain his control. My aunt was continuously laughing and doubled over holding her stomach. I kept complaining that no one would let me grab a hold of them to stop my fall. My aunt said, “Can you stop a speeding bullet?” I was in intense pain and when I arrived home I had turned blue, purple, yellow, brown, and green on my buttocks and on my legs, and I said to myself, “I am never going back again.”
This story was one of my aunt’s favorite stories and she told it every time we got together when the family got together for Christmas or whatever holiday. She said I was flying down the slopes, she said I looked like Snoopy with a little red scarf flying behind him. I still laugh about it, but that was my last ski trip.