A good day
With a quick surge, a movement repeated thousands of times and familiar for its routine, Anne’s hand closes and then tightens her boot. Her hand though lingers, stopping on her leg, just under the knee. It strokes something invisible, a ghost, something within her, something whose exterior mark is a long clear mark on the skin of her leg.
Anne thinks, while she cautiously tests the stability of the snow with her edge, before setting off.
“It's not perfect, therefore I won't go. It's not perfect, therefore I will stay home. Rubbish”
Life itself is imperfection.
Today it will be the weather, tomorrow it will be the snow conditions, and the day after a scar on your leg to remind you of that metal pin which holds your bones together: there will always be something imperfect. It is only in that istant, that you accept imperfection as the inevitable component of the universe, when you have the opportunity to change your life.
Because conditions are not important. On the contrary, they are part of a journey.
Of your journey, of your past, of what has brought you to be who you are and where you are, or the story you will tell during the evening, happy and exhausted at the end of a day during which the rest of the world is stuck at the window waiting, getting bored, looking for perfection.
Because no matter who you are, freerider or ski-mountaineer, if your goal is to quickly ski through the gates or explore your local mountains. It doesn't matter if the sky is intensely blue or you can't tell the ground from the sky.
What matters is skiing. .
Two easy words for an intricate truth nothing lasts, nothing is over, nothing is perfect, and that is what makes the universe amazing. But there is something that belongs to us: the chance of accepting our fragility or the conditions for what they are, not for what we want them to be.
The moment belongs to us, the ability to stay centered, pick our line and go, steady and in control.
Anne takes a deep breath and begins her descent, listening to and managing the response of her legs, controlling pressure and speed, bump after bump, enjoying the feeling. There, if perfection does exist that is what it feels like.
