Young Writers Society

Winter is my favorite season. The ground is covered with snow, the sun is not as bright, creeks and waterfalls turn to ice, and the temperatures are cold. In short, heat is my worst enemy. But that is not why I love winter; yes, winter is a time to bundle up. Winter is Christmas time. Winter is when I have my birthday. But those are not the reasons I love winter. No, I love winter because I love to ski.

Every winter for the past four years, I have gone to Banner Elk, North Carolina, with my church youth group. We spend five days every winter on the slopes, skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, and sledding. At the hotel, we worship, play games on someone’s X-Box, sled some more, and do God knows what in the snow-drenched forest outside; in short, anything (reasonable) anyone suggests we all will usually do. Such activities range from sledding on cardboard boxes over a drop off, which leads directly into a busy road; sledding in pitch-blackness on a logging road, despite there being fire hydrants, ditches, roots, and steel trash bins hiding in the shadows; “shoe-skating” on ice on the asphalt of the parking lot; and hosting many other fun, multi-player games like tag, snowball fights, wrestling matches, and hide and seek.

There was one day last year that topped it all off. It was the best day ever! Everyone still comments on it, even today. It was the day Jordan, my skiing partner, literally lost her board.

We had ridden the lift to the top of the Freestyle slope yet again, a giant slope that was about four football fields long and two football fields wide. The slope angle ranged from almost vertical on one side – where the most advanced slope ended – to almost horizontal on the other. We stood at the top, debating on how to ride down this time. I had limited choices, since I was on skis, but Jordan had several options: going down typically, with board attached to the feet; going down on the right (horizontal) slope; going down on the left (vertical) slope; going down the middle; and, last but not least, sledding on her snowboard. I chose to ski, of course, while Jordan settled with sledding.

The first hundred yards were great; I didn’t fall and Jordan had a firm grip on her board. Everything was going nice and smooth, just the way we had planned. That was all to change; suddenly, a rookie skier – although I’m not that great myself – lost control of her skis and literally rocketed over Jordan’s head and plowed into me. In the chaos, Jordan jumped out of the way, freeing her board, and the skier and I disappeared in a flurry of flying snow. It took several long minutes to get our skis out from under each other, stand back up, and assess the damage we had done to each other. Bruises and friction burns would keep up awake tonight…

“Audra,” Jordan suddenly asked, completely bewildered. “Where’s my board?”

It took me a minute to understand her question. Her board had gone missing. “You let it go?”

“I had to, to keep from being run over!”

We looked around, trying to find tracks of its passage. Nothing was apparent in the snow; people had passed us and already wiped away any signs of a track. But, thinking about it, I got an idea. The slope of this side of the hill was curved to the side, toward the median. At the base of the median was the lift, but in front of the lift was a drop off of about thirty feet with no access.

“It went over the edge!” I exclaimed. The next instant found me kicking my skis off and running down hill, Jordan following closely behind. If it was at the bottom, we could get to it without trouble. If it was anywhere else on that steep drop, we would more than likely need help. We observed the structure and details of the drop. A small pond formed in front of the rise, fed by a half-frozen waterfall. Snow covered the entire slope, and we had no idea how to tell how deep the rifts were. The board was nowhere to be seen.

“It’s probably in the snow, somewhere,” Jordan considered, and moved in. I followed behind her, stepping carefully as we made our way toward the drop off and a difficult climb. We cross the pond, jumping it with ease, to find ourselves up to our waist in snow. The slope was exceptionally slippery and steep; one wrong footing sent you face first into the rifts and sliding a few feet downhill. Minutes drug on, eventually becoming half an hour as we struggled, stepped, shifted through the snow, and stepped up again. We had nothing to grab onto but each other for support. All we could do was step, shift, reach, and step again.

Then, at long last, we found the snowboard. It was concealed by snow-doused bushes at the top of the rise, only a five-foot climb from the peak. Even though we were embarrassed by the premature conclusion and unnecessary feat, and annoyed by the loss of time to be on the slopes, we had still recovered the board.

We let ourselves slide down the slope, on our backs. The miniature sledding on our backs was fun and made us laugh. Jordan and I pat each other on the back, now soaking wet and freezing cold from the snow we had to march through, and made our way back to the cafeteria, where everyone was watching us and waiting to hear our tale.