Oriented
The short stomp to Miharashii leaves the crowds behind. Rasping breath, crunching snow, followed by the wind in the branches of a withered silver birch tree. The Japanese pop is fading into a distant, tinny rattle. The chirpy Japanese announcement as the gondola approaches, carries across the slope. Mamonaku shuten desu... I zip my jacket and click into my skis. The weave of my pole straps rubs across my gloves, and then I whump up and down. Jon is just starting to walk. He looks up to me and silently says go ahead.
I am between the family course and the Gondola. The chirpy Japanese girl has faded away, the music blaring over the piste is lost here, just a straining ear away. I hear the rumples of my jacket, the soft purr of fresh snow. Behind me the chirping, pinging ski slope is awash with New Year skiers, instructors barking at students in abrupt Japanese syllables. The low whine of a ski patrol snow mobile stops suddenly. Two more turns and I slide into silence. The sun appears as if waiting for everyone to shut up before joining the conversation, only to say nothing. My breath is sharp. The creak of my boots as I stretch, the awkward crack of my leather gloves when I flex my hands. No one is here. I choose my line and start a song in my head. My head bobs to the invisible tune and my knees start to bend. I am moving fast by the time the guitar starts and I have left the spontaneous whoosh of turns in between the knuckled, bare trees, the cloud and sound falling as I press on.
The last turns through the copse are exhilarating. I stop at the end of the run and look at the line, a treble clef dotted by trees, and wonder where the sound has gone. The blaring wind and shuddered breathing, a powder yelp somewhere near the first mushroom, left behind, hanging in the air, only to fall away like the settling powder.
Now it is silent. Maybe Jon will run into them on his way down. Maybe he will start his turns and rush head first through my breathless run.
I pole onto the family course and slice from silence to sound. The gondola is surrounded by shuttle buses and bilingual announcements about lift operations. I can hear the instructors, the ping, crowds. From sound to silence and back again.
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