Friday, December 14, 2007

When its perfect, its perfect.


A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Tom and I used to go climbing together in far off lands! We loved pushing ourselves and trying things just out of our reach (and lots of stuff that was way over our heads). One of the things that always really impressed me about Tom was that he enjoyed a classic 5.6 with great movement as much or more than climbing a really tough 5.13.

This was always surprising to me as my idea of fun was ALWAYS to try the next hardest thing, to tackle something undoable and do it. Tom, on the other hand, can play. I never would have learned this lesson without him, I never would have thought, OOH! Theres a really fun 5.5 we should do! Before Tom, I would have thought of that as a waste of time. He slowed me down and showed me the beauty of simple movement, the pure pleasure of a route that's just fun to climb.

This morning, I went skiing for the first time this year with Michael and Josh. We took off up the Alpine lift, and headed off to the South Boundary of the ski area. On the lift, I was excited and chatty, eager to jump right into hard training with Michael. I didn't want to appear pushy, so I tried to just contain it and told myself to go with whatever, if they just want to ski, just ski.

We got to the top and I asked Michael, "So what are we doing? Where are we going?" He smiled and said, "Down." Josh laughed and we took off three in a row, through thigh deep sparkling powder. It was silent, easy, the sun came out and the powder spray looked like glitter in the air. We floated down moderate pitches giggling all the way. It was a perfect moment. I had the thought of grabbing my camera and getting a clip, but I just wanted to be in that moment, enjoying just skiing, just being with people I like to spend time with, loving the movement and the feeling, not training, or trying, or pushing, just skiing.

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