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Descending the Void

Today a ski lift at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine dropped five chairs and six skiers to the ground, where they escaped injury by luckily landing in 20 inches of soft ungroomed powder (here).

Nothing strikes fear down my vulnerable spinal cord like the words “ski lift accident.” My head may be protected by a moon-sized ski helmet, and I may totter down the slopes like a tentative turtle, but downhill skiers are forever at the mercy of those swaying wires, grinding pylons, and rickety chairs that convey us uphill. Because you cannot go downhill until you are uphill.

It took me awhile to feel comfortable on a ski lift. Vertigo-prone, untrusting, I would clench the safety bar and stare at my gloves, willing the onward progression of the chair with all of the sentient awareness not obsessing about the precarious bearings of my corporeal being.

Gradually, I began to loosen up. I looked down at the skiers below. I slackened my grip on the safety bar. I anticipated the next run. I breathed easy and ventured to assume that the ski lift had cured my fear of the void.

The void. Because it’s not really heights that I fear: it’s the void. And there are few voids more profound than the expanse of cold air below the dangling skis on a ski lift. But if I had to choose between dropping from a ski lift into a bed of fresh snow or remaining trapped on the ski lift for two hours in bitter wind, well, I might prefer the plunge.

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