Wood Skis

The Payson kids, walking like storm troopers in stiff boots, caught the school bus at the local library that January morning. The bus arriving five minutes late of the six o’clock pick up. Our noses frozen, juggling brown-bag lunches, biting off our gloves in order to retrieve our passes after vying position to throw our poles and all into the cave of under berth storage, and as soon as I’d found a seat near the back, all lurched forward for the forty minute trek from town up Provo Canyon.

Winding too fast round drifted edges, we finally reached the Sundance parking lot for our first day of lessons. Not just my neighbor and his friends, but the ski instructors, one for intermediate and the other taking beginners, laughed and pointed at my over 200 centimeter length, Fischer, wood skis--fully equipped with strap bindings when everyone else had proper brakes, their entire length painted banana-boat yellow. Most of my friends had gotten new black or red Rossignol’s for Christmas, and full bodysuits in stealthy dark or bunny pink.

Most kids started taking the ski bus around ten and I was already fifteen, but it was the first year I’d been able to save enough money delivering newspapers for the weekly, $9 lift ticket. My only Santa Claus gift that year, the laminated bus pass and hand-me-down gear.

I wore a striped seventies coat and the skis were my mom’s old ones.

Dizzy from the bus ride and hands frozen after fitting the metal ticket frame through my zipper eye and wrestling on the student sticker, I’d approached the group and picked up my skis from the pile the bus-driver had dropped.

“I’ll tell you what,” the first, frosted-tip, Rob Lowe look-a-like said to me while winking at the other gleaming-toothed Ken coach, with glacier glasses covering his eyes, but not his smirk,
“If you can learn to ski on these, you’ll be best on the mountain!”

I felt my face flash, instant wind of red burn, but did my best to pretend I wasn’t embarrassed and thanked the man. Bent down, hands shaking, to confidently pull the rainbow bindings through the tiny silver buckles while everyone else stood,
and one, two, clap-snapped their boots right in.

Photo Credit: Toa Heffiba/unsplash