Illustration by Alex Siklos
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At the age of 40, I decided to take up downhill skiing. I had recently moved with my family from Haida Gwaii, a remote archipelago off the north Pacific coast, to Revelstoke, a small town in the Columbia mountain range of interior British Columbia.
Most people move to Revelstoke for the ski hill: North America’s longest vertical descent. We moved here for my partner Ty’s job, but we figured we should take advantage of our new town’s claim to fame. We bought season’s passes and registered our kids in weekly lessons.
Hazel and Arlo had lived their entire lives in Haida Gwaii, a place where snow falls rarely and melts quickly. Downhill skiing would be new territory for all of us except Ty, who had learned to ski as a kid and spent a few winters snowboarding and working as a bartender in Whistler. I’d only downhill skied a couple of times in high school, on tiny Ontario ski hills. I learned to cross-country ski in my 20s and figured it would be straightforward to pick up downhill skiing, where at least your ankle was fixed in a heavy boot.
It turned out to be a bigger undertaking than I’d anticipated.
Learning to ski in midlife, I felt connected to my inner perfectionist. I found it embarrassing not to know how to do something everyone else in town did so easily. I wanted to learn on an empty mountain, all by myself. I thought I had healed these parts of myself – wanting to be good at everything, worrying about what other people think – but learning to ski brought these insecurities back to the surface.
The first thing I had to work through was my fear of heights. On the chair lift, images of Hazel and Arlo sliding under the bar and falling to their deaths popped into my head. I held onto my children with a death grip. They rolled their eyes at me.
Every weekend, I confronted my fear and embarrassment. I was scared of falling, which I did regularly, and of injuring myself, which I didn’t do, though I spent most weeks recovering from minor whiplash from the hardest falls.
I decided to give it one full winter. If skiing turned out not to be my thing, Ty could take the kids while I had some time alone. I started fantasizing about this, particularly when I fell hard. As I lay splayed across the snow I would think, “why am I not reading a novel in the bathtub?”
Following a particularly discouraging day on the mountain, I signed up for a private lesson. My instructor and I skied a couple of runs together before she declared that what I most lacked was confidence. “You’re better than you think,” she said. “Don’t let your fear hold you back. You can’t control the mountain, but you get to decide how to navigate it – which route to take, where to turn, how fast to go.”
I have returned to this advice many times, both on the ski hill and off, reminding myself just to take it one turn at a time.
Near the end of that season, as we loaded up the chairlift one Sunday in early April, I noticed a new calm in my belly. The kids sat between Ty and me and told us stories about their week at school. The sky was clear and sunny, the air warm and I took in the view – mountain peaks as far as the eye could see. We skied down the run together – Arlo in a beeline, Hazel carving turns, Ty poking in and out of the trees and me bringing up the rear. I felt happy and free and grateful to be part of this family Ty and I had dreamed of and made together.
In Revelstoke terms, I remain a terrible skier. The place is full of elite athletes. They are coaching their children, pushing them hard. In comparison, we are a family of readers, going outside once in a while to enjoy the slopes and fresh air.
But learning to ski in midlife has taught me that being good is not the point. The point is the fun of learning something new, spending time in my body, being outside with my family.
Now, when I’m on the slopes, I’m not afraid. I feel an excited jolt in my stomach when we pile into the gondola. I didn’t know this about fear – that if you keep moving through it, you might find joy on the other side.
Hilary Thorpe lives in Revelstoke, B.C.