When I was a kid, I wanted to be an Olympic skier. I wanted to have a name like Picabo Street and win a gold medal. I grew up skiing in the Midwest, which surprisingly does produce several Olympic skiers like Lindsey Vonn who, at 41, is returning to this year’s Winter Olympic Games in Italy after a hiatus due to serious injuries and is considered one of the greatest skiers of all time—man or woman—next to her American teammate, Mikaela Shriffin. I was never that good of a ski racer and only competed in high school competitions. But somehow after a handful of years in Montana in my 20s, I found myself on the U.S. Telemark Ski Team and raced in the World Cup in Europe. It wasn’t the Olympics but it was more than I could have imagined when I watched skiers like Picabo and dreamed once day of ski racing on slopes much bigger than the hills of northern Michigan.
Telemark ski racing is an obscure and complicated sport but it’s how I met my husband and allowed me travel to Germany, Austria, and Norway to come in last or next to last place against the world’s top free-heeled skiers. I was in my late 20s, fulfilling an impossible dream and couldn’t believe my luck. I fell in love; I got to travel and meet people from all over the world and even signed an autograph for a young German elementary student who insisted I sign her ski poster despite my protest, which was likely horribly mistranslated as: I am not a good American. You do not want me. When I returned to Montana, I could ski powder and take a few days off from wearing my speed suit and panicking about races. How could skiing get any better?
Now that my kids are 10 and 6, skiing has gotten better. I feel stupidly lucky to say that skiing with kids is more fun than skiing powder or my backcountry trips of yore. Skiing with kids is more fun than racing in Norway on the same slopes as the 1994 Lillehammer Olympic Games where my idol Picabo Street won a silver in the downhill. Ski racing is funish. It is nerve-wracking and stressful and exhilarating. There is some fun involved and that fun usually comes after the competition, speed suits peeled off, feet out of ski boots, hot European coffee and pastries in hand and laughing with the rest of my bottom of the pack competitors. But skiing with two kids, on days where there is fresh snow or after long dry spells, who can load the chair on their own and glide down the mountain without too much help? So much fun. A ridiculous amount of fun, even.
I’ve hit the parenting ski milestone where my kids know more places on the mountain than I do, despite my 20-year head start. My daughter is a tree-trail skier who, in her fairy-like ways, can find the most magical little trails on the sides of runs or through the trees in areas that I would have normally overlooked. I am no longer as agile as I used to be but her love for discovering secret trails inspires me to follow suit. Conditions don’t matter much to my kids and it’s a refreshing reminder that skiing itself is a privilege and it doesn’t need adults to muck it up with complaints about weather or snow. From bumps to corduroy, with my kids you’re either keeping up or maybe you need a nap and snacks? This used to be a question I’d lob to them when they were younger, now, in all seriousness, they’re asking it of me.
Every run now affords a different perspective, a different opportunity to explore an overlooked area with the unbridled enthusiasm of kids who just want to have fun. They liked to push their bodies, which by the way, bounce back from falls and wobbles with such ease and grace that I long for. Is it possible to be jealous of a 6-year old? It is, when you’re a middle-aged mom whose ski injuries still cause aches and pains and hours logged at the gym and physical therapy. But I’ll take my jealousy with a side of another chairlift ride followed by a cup of hot chocolate at the end of the day. Ski kids know how to do it right: ski all day, eat snacks, and end the day with hot chocolate, sometimes even with whipped cream if the heavens align.
My younger self would not believe that she’d later find herself racing in the World Cup and that former ski racer self wouldn’t believe that of all the ski experiences she’s had, skiing with her two kids would be gold medal level. It’s not even a competition.