When I began this little column a few weeks ago, I led you all (read: the 7 people outside of my immediate family who are reading this) to believe that I would lay out the heart-warming and touching story that was my hard fought ascendance from the hell of addiction into the splendor of ski-bummedness. While that’s fundamentally true—minus the histrionics—this column will also sometimes be a forum for me to ramble about any number of things even peripherally related to either the aforementioned hell or splendor. My hope is that these little breaks from our central narrative will act as colorful little asides that serve to let you, the reader, get a better feel for your protagonist. My other hope is that you all just bought that, and that I successfully put off delving into my past for another week. So…

I have reoccurring dreams; moreover, I’ve always had reoccurring dreams. Almost invariably, these dreams land somewhere between “mildly unpleasant” to “sleep shatteringly horrific.” They seem to emerge from nowhere, linger for a few months, and then recede back into whatever mess of a subconscious conjured them in the first place. The pattern is so regular, in fact, that I sometimes use the distinct dream phases as points of reference. For example, “Oh, right! We were doing that a lot in the summer of ’05,” is more like, “Oh, right! We were doing that a lot during the ‘I just got to English class after having not showed up for six weeks and a paper is due’ dream period.” Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but I’m pretty sure that this specific dream was a rather heavy handed metaphor for the nearly crippling anxiety I was wrestling with at the time. I haven’t really ever been able to draw any substantial parallels between the specifics of the individual dreams, leading me to believe that interpreting the dreams as a “whole” is more or less pointless. I feel qualified to make such an assessment as I’m quite certain that it’s literally impossible for a person to spend more time than I engaged in self-indulgent brooding. Rather, the dreams appear to serve as pressure release valves for whatever particular style of craziness has worked itself into a frenzy in my head at a given time.

The summer of 2009 will forever be known as the “Cruelly Unsatisfying Ski Dream Period.” It goes like this: There I am, at one ski area or another, ready to do the damn thing. I’m accompanied by friends—in the most recent iteration, Brobomb’s Jon himself—and the dream always begins with us in the lodge. My companions are already wearing the necessary garb and are lingering, waiting for me to get my ass in gear…so to speak. From my vantage, I have a view of the chairlift and those waiting to climb aboard it as I hurriedly attempt to get dressed. I’m dimly aware that time is of the essence, and that my piddling with my gear could turn out to be a disaster. However, one thing after another conspires to impede me on my quest. Sometimes, my jacket is a little bit wet inside, making it maddeningly difficult to work my hands through the sleeves. Other times, a glove or a sock that was present only moments prior, is now missing. Other times still, my skis, which were carefully left at the complimentary ski check, are MIA. All the while, my panic mounts, and inevitably my friends shrug and head for whiter pastures, leaving me alone and unimaginably frustrated. Sometimes I’m then forced to watch them ski, resigned to the idea that I can’t. Other times I just leave.

Gah.

When I relayed this dream to my friendly neighborhood coffee peddler, she responded sarcastically, “Gee, I wonder what that’s about”. Now, I know what she, and you Psych majors and/or Freud fans, are thinking. Goddammit, this is not about a fear of sexual inadequacy or dysfunction. My “gear” works just fine, thank you…so back off. What this dream is about, I’ve decided, is my bum knee. More specifically, this dream is about my fear that my bum knee is going to keep me sidelined this year, and that I’ll be forced to watch as my friends do what I love to do; what I live to do. 

Taos Ski Valley doesn’t open for just about another month, which in the world of healing knees is about half a lifetime; assuming of course that said knee is in fact healing. If I had money, health insurance, and/or I was born a Canadian, I’d know the answer to that question. I’ll save my rant about the U.S. healthcare crisis for a day I when I reeeeeaaally can’t bare the thought of being a tad vulnerable. For everyone’s sake, I hope that day never comes, because it’ll be a really shitty read.

Because no one likes a Debbie Downer, let’s end on a highnote:

Taos got it’s first real storm of the season on Wednesday. I drove the 18 miles to the base just to take a look. I had to. For the twenty minutes I stood there, I forgot all about my knee. I forgot about everything. That, my friends, is why I love snow covered mountains—even if I can’t play on ‘em.