Renew

Winding up Little Cottonwood Canyon this morning I could feel that it was going to be a good day.  It was bitter cold, like 2 degrees, and my breath was cold smoke inside the durango, but I was all smiles.  When its cold like that it kinda makes you feel alive because you are in this primal struggle to stay alive.   Putting my ski boots on is misery, fingers responding to the arctic chill and toes resigned to a day of freeze and thaw.  As soon as I feel my binding grab my boot my skis become an appendage and the snow starts to churn under my weight.  Skirting across the Cirque traverse the cold and wind coerce to compel me downward and I realize my existence on this ridge is temporary; hang around here long enough and the very life in me would be frozen and dead.  But there is beauty here. The nerve endings in my fingers tell me this is absurd, and it tells me this in the language of pain.  But I'm still all smiles.  Its a give-and-take world we live in.  The joy is in direct proportion to the misery.  I drop in my line and fall past the trees, gravity always works.  I notice that I'm grunting and my lungs feel the cold burn, I'm caught in the middle of this struggle to stay vertical.  I ride it out and find safety in the glades below, still all smiles.  I know why I do this. Because it reminds me that I want to live.  Happy New Year.