Читать книгу Higher Love - Kit DesLauriers - Страница 11

A year after making my list, I achieved both entries in the one-year category: I married Rob and moved to Jackson. But then my progress screeched to a halt. When we returned from a honeymoon in Greece—financed primarily through a Kellogg’s miles-for-box-tops promotion (really)—we entered a three-year period of keeping our heads down and working like our lives depended on it. The life we wanted required absolute commitment, and we committed absolutely. While I’ve never fully accepted Dad’s suggestion of mapping out precise budgets to accomplish my goals (I got only one “C” in college and it was in economics), I consider myself a realist, and with the opportunities at hand, one thing was obvious: If I could help Rob to be successful in his hotel development venture, that would give us our best chance at the independence we longed for.

When I wasn’t trying to help with the project at Rob’s makeshift office—a cheap one-bedroom condo where the living room, possibly illegally, became the office and the bedroom was reserved for his father when he visited from Vermont—I’d scrub toilets in the sales trailer or build stone patios for homeowners in the area as I’d done in Telluride. I got up every morning to make him breakfast and a brown-bag lunch because we couldn’t afford restaurant meals, ever. We brought in $2,000 a month in income, and $1,458 of that went for the mortgage.

Fortunately, I’d been well trained in living frugally. I grew up in a middle-class family that occasionally fell on hard times. We never got fountain drinks from 7-Eleven—one drink cost the same amount as a six-pack of soda—and we were strictly Nordic skiers, since Nordic equipment was cheaper than downhill equipment. And because it required less precise fitting, three children could get more seasons out of it—being the middle child, I always seemed to have skis that were too long or too short. There was also the fact that Nordic skiing required little to no travel. We could simply duck through the barbed-wire fence around the farmer’s fields down the road and push off.

One day when I was on my way out to ride bikes with friends in the neighborhood, my mom pulled me aside. “Please be careful for a little while,” she said, looking uncomfortable. “We don’t have health insurance and can’t afford for anyone to get hurt.” Slurpees I could live without, but the idea of not having enough money for emergencies was downright scary.

So the toughest part about my current situation as a struggling newlywed wasn’t paying for groceries or car insurance with the $500 left after the mortgage—I knew how to scrape by. And it wasn’t the physical labor, which I actually enjoyed and was used to. The toughest part was that my life’s mission had shifted to helping my husband succeed at his new and consuming career—part of his five-year plan from “the list.” I yearned for the life of adventure I’d cultivated but abruptly left behind. Soon after our honeymoon, Alta had died at the young age of nine, and I missed my friends in Colorado—I had no friends of my own in this new place. I felt like my fingerprints had been erased, as if the nature I’d promised to honor had been put in a cage. Who was I? I was serving a cause greater than myself, working for our freedom, and I didn’t understand why that wasn’t enough for me. Why was this so hard?

AFTER THREE YEARS WITHOUT A single visit to New England to see our families or more than an occasional splurge on gasoline to drive to Lander, Wyoming, to go climbing for the weekend, we finally made it. We’d saved enough money to buy a home at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in the summer of 2003. And to commemorate the occasion, we took our first trip since the honeymoon—a celebration of our combined commitment to getting his project done, of our connection, and of the potential to make my own goals a priority again in the near future.

“Where do you want to go?” Rob asked, leaving the destination up to me.

“I want to ski a big mountain in New Zealand,” I said, not needing to add that it had been on my five-year game card since that day in the Boston airport.

“New Zealand is my favorite place I’ve ever been. Let’s do it.”

In November, we landed in Christchurch. New Zealand’s South Island is a land of gentle people and exquisite contrasts: rolling green farmland, rugged coastlines, pristine rivers, and glaciated mountains. We spent twenty days seeing it by way of a rented van that doubled as our hotel room, with a plywood bed in back and crates of cooking gear stored under it. I’d been amazed to find this makeshift “camper” online, but then, what Americans call “roughing it” is a regular part of life for Kiwis.

As for the reason I’d wanted to come to New Zealand—to climb and ski a mountain—we’d decided on Mount Aspiring because the name struck a chord with me and the photos I’d seen of the “Matterhorn of the South” were stunning. The problem was, after driving across the island to the jumping-off town of Wanaka, mountain guides we’d befriended told us that most successful climbs begin with a helicopter lift to the Colin Todd Hut; there are so few days of good weather on the mountain that it’s uncommon to get the three in a row it would take to climb it from the bottom and get down below the glaciers before a storm sets in. Since Rob and I couldn’t afford to hire a heli-lift, we felt we had no choice but to wait for a good weather window and climb the whole way on our own power.

As it turned out, when we checked in at the guides’ office to get a weather report on the fifth morning, we found head guides Dave and Nick scrambling to gather gear, and they offered us their extra seats on a heli-lift to the Bonar Glacier at a very discounted rate. We’d have to be ready by ten, though, because the weather window was so small. While I ran to the grocery store for mountain food, Rob ran to the ATM for the $300 that the flight would cost us, and we made it to the pickup site with all our gear packed just as the helicopter was landing.

After a short uphill ski from the heli-drop site, we spent the night at the Colin Todd Hut and started the six-hour climb to the summit at three the next morning. The weather window did indeed turn out to be small—a storm began to roll in just as we were stepping into our bindings on the summit, which made for an exciting descent. Adding to the drama was the fact that we took the guides’ suggestion to try a new variation that entailed skiing over lots of crevasses on the Therma Glacier.

In the end, though the mountain had seen close to a dozen ski descents before ours, on November 5, 2003, I became the first woman to ski down Mount Aspiring.

In addition to coming away with another adventure under our belts, we came away with new motivation to achieve Rob’s goal of skiing Denali. After our spicy summit day on Aspiring, we’d stayed the night at the French Ridge Hut with Dave and Nick and their clients, and Nick had suggested that we ski North America’s highest peak next. Rob and I traded smiles. The serendipity was impossible to ignore. We had eleven months left to meet the goals on our five-year lists, and Denali was still at the top of Rob’s.

So in true explorer fashion, we began plotting the next adventure before the current one was over. By the time we turned in for the night, we’d settled on a $5,000 budget and a date in May for our next expedition: climbing and skiing the highest mountain in North America.

MOUNT ASPIRING MARKED THE BEGINNING of a new era, one in which I focused less on playing the day-to-day support role for my husband, since he was now established in his world, and more on finding my fingerprints again. Besides planning for the expedition to Denali, I began to let myself dream about something else I’d written on my list: I wanted to win something. I wanted to know I could be the best at something.

The previous year, I’d suffered a massive lateral meniscal tear in my left knee while rock climbing on Elephant’s Perch in the Sawtooth Range of Idaho. After the surgery, I started a six-month rehab during which I couldn’t ski. Working as the caretaker of a home at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, I spent the winter alternating between physical therapy and lying on the couch looking at the tram going overhead and getting back into dreaming mode so I could find a positive outlet for my mind.

What if?

What if I trained very hard and stayed supremely focused? Was there a chance I could succeed at a freeskiing competition? And maybe win? When I’d toss my I Ching sticks to see what the Chinese Book of Changes had in mind for me, I got the answer: With total dedication, it was possible. I could feel it in my body when I contemplated the question, even before tossing the sticks. It was so far out there for a thirty-three-year-old woman who’d never competed at skiing: so bold, so exciting, so possible.

In June 2003, Rob and I had climbed and skied the Grand Teton in Wyoming for the first time, and it was also the first time I’d done anything physically significant with no knee pain since my injury nine months earlier. By December, after the confidence boost I’d gotten on Aspiring, the question I’d sat on for over a year was demanding an answer: Am I ready to try competitive freeskiing? I didn’t need the I Ching sticks to tell me that the answer was “Yes.”

I’d never been afraid to attempt new things. When I was fourteen, my dad asked if I wanted to go downhill skiing (because we could finally afford it), and I imagined it would be like a terrifying amusement-park ride.

As it turned out, skiing immediately became my favorite thing in life. It felt like a dance. A dance I wanted to master. Over the years, I set higher and higher goals for myself until I finally skied from the summit of the Grand Teton for the first time in June 2003, but even with that amazing experience under my belt, one big aspect of skiing still eluded me: competition. The closest I’d ever come was a local banked slalom race in Jackson in March 2002, a few months before my knee injury. I didn’t know a thing about freeskiing—why did I think I could compete, let alone win?

Actually, when I looked up the rules of the sport, it seemed like the biggest obstacle might be a technicality I’d have to overcome. To compete at the world level, a skier had to have had a top-ten finish at the national level the previous year. Aaargh. I’d just turned thirty-four and didn’t want to wait another year.

I called the head of the International Freeskiers Association and asked to compete in the first event, to be held at Whistler-Blackcomb, in British Columbia. I wanted this too much to give up without trying.

“Hi, Adam. I’m not sure if you remember me, but we skied together last April at Snowbird, and I really want to compete on the World Tour. I know the first event is in two weeks—would it be possible to enter even though I don’t have the resume?”

“I remember you,” he said. “We skied that run with Rob and you caught air like a guy. I’ll give you a bye to get in, but don’t tell any of the other competitors.”

One obstacle down. How many more to go?

In 2004, the format for each stop on the World Freeskiing Tour was a three-day event. Day one was a judged qualifying run for the skiers who still had to prove themselves as well as a chance for prequalified skiers to make course inspections for the next day. Day two was the first day of the main competition, when at least half the skiers were eliminated. The finals were on day three and were held on the most difficult terrain that a ski resort had to offer, often requiring the competitors to hike to the start zones in areas normally closed to the public. Five judges, who watched the 2,000-vertical-foot ski descents through binoculars, handed out scores based on five categories: control, fluidity, technique, aggressiveness, and difficulty of line choice. The last category carried the most weight, so no one who skied through the main drain of a run would ever advance to day two, and neither would anyone who fell or even made a less-than-solid landing on a jump.

When I got to Blackcomb and competed in that season’s first stop on the World Freeskiing Tour, I quickly figured out the unwritten rule of a podium finish. I needed to pick as difficult a line as I felt reasonably sure I could ski without making a mistake, and I needed to ski it fast, with no hesitation.

The combined point score from each day of competition decided who was the winner of an event. Each top finish at an individual event, from first through fifth, held a point value, and at the end of the four stops on the tour, the skier with the highest cumulative score was the overall winner. In addition to Blackcomb, there was an event in France and two in the United States.

I came in eighth at Blackcomb largely because my ski bindings popped off whenever I tried to land a significant air, all of which were bigger than I’d ever made myself jump before. But by the time of the last event, held in Kirkwood, California, on April 5, I’d upgraded my bindings as well as my technique enough to pick up a second and a first. The field of international competitors was an average age of ten years younger than me, yet I was in a close race for first in terms of overall points for the tour. During the final run, though, I faced one of my most difficult mental moments of the tour. Rob was in the crowd of spectators over 2,000 vertical feet below, and I knew how let down he’d be if I got hurt and we couldn’t go on our Denali expedition three short weeks later. Now that the Teton Mountain Lodge was open for business, Rob’s position had transitioned from developer to property manager and he’d thrown himself back into work with such dedication that he hardly took a day off all winter, including weekends. He needed Denali. But with the point scores so close, I couldn’t afford to play it safe if I wanted to win. How could I handle the pressure and stay focused?

At the starting gate, my stomach churned as the possibilities floated across my consciousness. I was staring at the finish line far below when the solution came to me. No amount of worrying or thinking about the Denali expedition would help me at the moment. I had to have a pure belief in myself to ski at the highest level possible. There wasn’t space for so much as a single negative thought if I wanted both the title and the Denali trip. I had to be as single-minded as I’d been about taking the bone away from Alta and helping Rob succeed in his career.

I stepped into the starting zone and a rush of heat flooded my body. Each area I was about to ski through was seared into my memory. I’d been visualizing my run since I woke up that morning, and now my brain sailed through the sequences at lightning speed. After the starter said, “Three, two, one, go!” I set off in pursuit of the same pace I’d just seen in my vision.

Stay strong through the steep turns ahead . . . It gets tighter, so be more technical, Kit. Maintaining my speed for the mandatory traverse to the right, I scanned the zone below so I could hit my entrance to the wide-open face at the right place. Now down and right to the fall line, open it up and show some big fast turns and pop through those short trees . . . Now set up to catch air off that rock. It was hard to see the ground—the takeoff was all white—but I started on the right and landed a little left to miss the bomb holes left by the other skiers. Stick it! Capitalizing on the speed from the jump, I tightened my core to stay centered on my skis until I reached the next rock. It’s smaller, so go for it. After landing, I sailed through the trees above the cliff band and then switched to short-radius technical turns to navigate the rocky section below. Now straight-line to go faster and get to the left side of the drainage to set up for the biggest air . . . Scrub just enough speed to land on the right side of the zone without hitting the other wall of rock. The risk of taking this air big enough to land on the other side will score well. Pick up your heels, Kit—just retract. Don’t leap too far. I still wasn’t expert at estimating airtime and nearly crashed into the rock wall, but I stayed on my feet with just enough fluidity to continue downhill. Now keep it together—you have to stay on the traverse back to the middle or you’ll end up in the flats shuffling across the finish line . . . Yes—just a straight line from the finish. Show some aggressiveness. You don’t need to make a turn here—just go, and stay stable on both feet.

When I crossed the finish line I was ecstatic. I knew I’d made a great run, the best of any woman so far that day, and I hadn’t even thought about getting hurt. I could have made the last landing a little tighter, a little better, but I’d landed it and done nothing to lose any serious points.

After taking my skis off, tears welled in my eyes as I walked over to Rob, who gave me a knowing smile. There was one woman left to ski, and she wasn’t even close to me in the overall point score.

It was official: I was the best at something.