“I know basically what’s required to get to the top. Understand the weather. Practice your route. Don’t wait until you’re in perfect shape. Just step into your boots and go. A time worn recipe for doing, as opposed to staying stuck in place. Of which I’ve done both, in equal measure, over the course of my long life. Obviously, conditions change. The snow’s piled up. The most difficult logs, the ones I’m unable to cross without major contortions, they haven’t gone away but are different. I’m glad no one sees what I do. That’s for me to ponder. It’s dangerous. But I didn’t have to come up here alone. But maybe I did. Guys are short on words, and leave you in the lurch without explaining. For god’s sake, don’t stop skiing when they go missing. The woods won’t accept that kind of absence without really yanking your chain. Total immersion on obscure mountain byways, only gets better with age unless you buckle. Maybe you die on the trail. But no one will ever doubt you loved your trees. I couldn’t have given more to this lost mountain. And it, to me. The intense quiet of the woods this last month, it’s been unsettling, but pure. Who am I too question? At the very top of the most difficult traverse, I glide down into the forest maze I’ve learned to navigate. It no longer scares me though once I was lost here. Possibly more than once, I was lost here. Does that ring a bell? We can get lost in the same familiar places, time and time again. We do it, to set the record straight. And finally, taking the blessing of a cathedral of maples on a deciduous rise of forgotten land, within spitting distance of Killington 50 miles away, I’ve gained secure footing. There is such a thing as earning the trust of land. Not a “land trust” but something without reference to ownership. On the tip top of the hill, having stumbled through saplings overrunning the old meadows, and saying goodbye to land stewardship now defunct, as those stewards have died, I’m just here to listen. One sound, one woodpecker, and nothing else but the oppressive silence of a windless winter freeze. I’m frozen, waiting for his rap. I’m riveted, to be known to another creature. For I’m sure he is performing. Doing his diligent digging into rotten trunks, but with me in mind. I’ve arrived on time. For the final meeting, perhaps, of me and a bird. Who knows when I will ever return. Skiing down the steep western ridge is both ecstatic and profoundly, a goodbye.”
