Skiborg 3: Chairlift prosthesis

Skiborg 3: Chairlift observations from a mundane ski cyborg

I posted images from my phone (that boon companion and faithful sidekick) of my ten days at Kirkwood to my Facebook page. Why? Well partly I love the idea of people seeing a few images of sun-drenched snow fields, vistas of snowcaps and wild like-a-giant-did-it-with-a-white-crayon contrail writing in the sky, and then suddenly finding themselves dreaming of renting skis, driving into the mountains, and sliding down whatever runs feel like the perfect balance of safety and risk. And partly I do it because Facebook has become my electronic photo album, my external memory, my public private place to micro journal (status updates anyone?) and scrapbook (photo albums geared to events, holidays, vacations) and be silly (I recently posted a series of bizarre images of raccoons; previously, twisted Valentines Day cards and Visions of Future Technologies from old Popular Mechanics magazines, visions that shall we say didn't quite work out).

One of the photos was just a picture of a lift chair in the air. But it doesn't do justice to the amount of time I spent on lifts during my ten day ski every day streak.

So skiing is sliding down hills, carving shapes on the surface of steep pitches of white, going kind of fast and then going faster. But skiing is also waiting (not so much at Kirkwood though occasionally the line feels like a very cold Post Office line at Christmas). And skiing is sitting on a big iron bench as it lifts into the air and then climbs hundreds of yards up the mountain. Sometimes this is a real challenge; you dress for the skiing part, so you don't want to overdress and be too hot, yet often when it is cold out the lift part reminds you that you could have used one more layer, a neck gaiter, in extreme weather a blood transfusion or a portable large fireplace.

The long slow ride up the mountain is a chance, if you so desire, to pause the Doing part of the brain and engage the Being part. So I thought a lot, reflected a lot, spaced out a lot. Hard to say how much of each since I find reflection and spacing out blend at some point. And the hot sun helped too; no primal chilling blasts of icy wind in the face, no fiendish Jack Frost eight degree nose-pinching, no Jack London am I going to die before the lift reaches the top revisitings of To Build A Fire. No, it was mostly incredibly sunny, and the lift on a Tuesday or Wednesday is as good as it gets for meditating. And there is a fixed time, too; at some point the meditation ends, you mentally note the takeaway, and then you keep your tips up and pop off the lift and (and isn't this what we all hope from deep meditations, long reflections on life and love and liberty) there you are: on Top of the World. Literally.

Another thing about chairlifts: chair lifts are big metal arms for lifting humans as if they were children; that is, they do what amusement park rides do. Remember when you are little and your dad or mom lifted you up and spun you around? Threw you up in the air and caught you (hopefully every time)? I have body memories of my dad as a Huge Person picking me up and throwing me; I remember holding my son when he was the size of Mister Peanut from the ads, holding him up Kunta Kinte style as we stood at the edge of the Puget Sound and thinking "This is probably what I felt like back in the day when I was the peanut; someone godlike can pick me up and it feels more or less safe, like I'm literally in good hands, strong hands." Well I think amusement park rides are partly nostalgias for those days when Big People ran the show and took care of you, and when they were in a good mood even amused you and excited you. And chairlifts are a very mellow version of that. It's like your mom picking you up and putting you way way up on that slide that you can't quite climb yet.

And chairlifts are the slowing down of the pace of the day, forcing even the adrenaline junkies to do nothing, stare out at the mountains, feel the change of weather from low to high. They are chances to put your arms around your girl or guy, chances to look up at the sky and not down at the extremely interesting because at high speeds fairly dangerous whipping below and in front of you ground.

I'm not saying most people see lifts like this. But I am saying that there is something about the very nature of powerful reliable dependable iron hands hauling you up a mountain. And perhaps for some - for many? - you only notice when the powerful reliable iron hands aren't reliable. On Tuesday Chair 2 stopped for what felt like forever (probably less than ten minutes, more than five). We were hanging fifty feet in the air; people grew restive, a guy yelled a couple of times (that sure helped); our Inalienable Right to being hauled up the hill by our metal parent was being abrogated. For me, I got to talk to the two Argentinian girls in front of me (they asked if I'd seen the movie Frozen, where skiers get stranded on a lift after dark and terror ensues), feel a moment of panic (stomach drops a little looking down), more than a few moments of envy (the people who'd gotten off the lift just before it shut down were happily scampering down the hill on their prosthetics and singing happy not stuck on a lift songs). The song in my bowling ball helmet sound system shifted to an old timey tune with banjo by Union Station, about going off to the Civil War. I listened, trapped dangling and looking over forbidding mountains; I imagined what this place would have been like in 1860, what it would look like to a man or woman on foot, on horseback, pulling a wagon. And the song sang its plaintive words:

From the bright sunny south to the war, I was sent,
E'er the days of my boyhood, I scarcely had spent.
From it's cool shady forests and deep flowing streams,

Ever fond in my mem'ry and sweet in my dreams.

I couldn't go anywhere. The mountains changed from playthings to obstacles to uncanny symbols of what divided here from an unimaginable there, where I might have to go, to fight and kill, to buy and till.

Then the lift shuddered, slowly we moved as if the horses hitched to the wagon were finally, and with much complaint, shuffling forward. The line gave a cheer, the Argentinian girls yelled "Watch Frozen!" and in a minute I was hopping off the lift and hauling over to the Ski Patrol hut with the big dogs sleeping in the sun, the bucket of Pepsis and waters and Mountain Dews. The bucket has a sign $1 and you put the money in a cast in the shape of an arm. Someone's cast, it seems, now just a memory of a fracture, a break.