"It’s Crystal Clear Now"

Is there something you really enjoyed as a child, but you’ve never gotten around to doing it as an adult? Perhaps it’s going to the circus, eating cotton candy at a baseball game, or sleeping out under the stars. For me it was cross-country skiing. When I heard what a tremendous amount of snow the northwest U.S. had received this past winter and my sister had discovered some great places for skiing, I said to myself “What are you waiting for?” I had just received a bonus from my company, and with my wife’s encouragement, decided to spend some of it on sheer enjoyment. So, I hopped on a plane in early March to Boise, where my sister and her husband live, rented the necessary ski equipment, and headed together for a beautiful cabin outside of Stanley, a tiny town nestled in the Grand Teton Mountains at 6,000-ft elevation.

When we arrived in a few hours, we were delighted to find that conditions were nearly ideal for skiing, with several inches of fine powder snow on top of a 5-foot base, and afternoon temperatures around 20. Though I hadn’t skied in 20 years, it didn’t take me long to get the hang of it once again. However, my sister did have to remind me about proper posture a number of times, such as keeping my knees slightly bent at all times. This makes it much easier for the body to absorb shocks from unexpected sudden changes. This is especially important for someone who’s totally blind, like myself, and though my sighted companions did very well in warning me of major changes that lay ahead, they couldn’t possibly tell me of every little bump in the path.

Along the path of life, I’ve definitely hit some “bumps” of a different kind in the road, some not so small. Had I not been flexible, these bumps would have knocked me off my feet and been far more painful than they were. In the summer of ’99, for example, when we totaled our van in Louisiana, rather than scrapping our vacation plans altogether and returning home with our four children, we scaled down the travel plans a bit and relaxed with relatives in South Carolina for a week and a half before purchasing a new van to travel slowly home to Arizona.

Besides keeping a flexible posture in skiing, I also had to be adaptable – that is, I needed to be able to make mid-course corrections, even while traveling down hill at high speeds. This is accomplished by making small corrective steps or by leaning into the curve and digging the inside edges of the skies into the snow. Since we mostly traveled along forest service roads, which are seldom straight, failure to make these adjustments likely meant getting more intimately acquainted with a tree than one would care to.

Just as there are people who steer well and others who don’t, I’ve met people who deal with mid-course corrections in life fairly well and others who don’t. One of the first major mid-course corrections I had to make occurred in my sophomore year in college. I had always wanted to be a weatherman, and was therefore studying atmospheric physics at Northern Arizona University. When my courses required reading weather maps but I couldn’t find a way to decipher them without sight, I was forced to make a major change. I’m glad I listened to the advice of my counselors, and changed my major to electrical engineering. I ended up doing very well in this field of study, graduating near the top of the class in 3 years, and landing a great job with a power company right out of college.

Just as I trusted my advisors in college, who had a better long-range view than I did, trusting my sister implicitly and completely was paramount on our skiing outing. When she would yell “Stop”, I didn’t have time to ask, “Why, what’s in the way?” unless I wanted to find myself straddling a rock. It was when I fully trusted that she would alert me to any danger that I could relax and really enjoy the experience. When we came to a wide-open slope, without any trees or rocks to worry about, I could just let myself go, rather than slowing down through the ski-plowing maneuver. I so enjoyed the feel of speed, with the icy wind rushing by my face, that I would often go through the effort to climb the hill again, so that I could enjoy whizzing down it yet another time. I found rushing down the hill to be fairly easy; it’s that initial push-off that’s hard, due to my fear of the unknown. At first, I would stand at the top of a hill for a while, wondering what would happen if I hit a bump and fell, or whether there was an obstacle my sister had neglected to tell me about. But, over a short time, my trust in my sister and my own abilities dispelled those fears.

How often we hold back, keeping us from enjoying things we love most and from capitalizing on opportunities we’ve labored for. Isn’t it so often because of being afraid to fail or having difficulty trusting others? Without trust, even in those who aren’t perfect, we cannot function as human beings. Before we accept a ride from someone, do we first verify that his or her driving record is perfect, or do we trust in their abilities to navigate us to our destination safely?

Because of the trust I have in my sister, as well as my decent skiing technique and a “can do” attitude, I was able to have a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. Yes, I did fall a few times each day, but never really got hurt. As I stood outside on the last day in the early morning, to enjoy the novelty of the clean, crisp sub-zero air, I reflected on the great time we had together. Not only did we have a great time skiing, but my relationship with my sister and her husband deepened, and affirmed my understanding of some important truths as well. The need for flexibility, adaptability, trust, and the importance of enjoyable experiences were all crystallizing in my mind, just as the morning mist was doing in mid-air on that memorable day.