Disasters, averted and natural

le Mont-Blanc, from our room this morning

Sam turned and looked out from under his covers and saw this. Right on schedule, the clouds had made their appearance again in the valley of Chamonix Mont-Blanc. He turned back on his other side and fell back into a lightly sonorous sleep.

It was our last day. I'd walked the dogs and made my coffee, and we had a choice to make: head up and ski what was left of the day at 10:30 am, head up and ski four hours, or not ski. That, we said, during a moment when Sam was awake and eating the pain au raisin I'd brought back from the boulangerie, with the baguette "origine" he voted Argentières best this year for his sandwiches, would depend on whether the clouds continued to gather or not.

We'd had eight days of sublime weather and skiing, and to be very honest, we were both incredibly spoiled and pretty much satisfied; if it were going to be a very low visibility day, we'd as soon skip it. Finally, we'd go up for the last four hours of the day, and by the time we headed out of the hotel at noon, the sun was bright again in the sky, with a decent visibility up on the slopes of Les Grands Montets.

"See, Mom? We made the right choice."

I nodded and we headed down the road that threads the valley, from Les Houches at one end to le Tour at the other, dominated entirely by the monumental panorama of the Mont-Blanc heading down toward the parking lot at Les Grands Montets. That is another slight pomme de discorde between Sam and I: he insists on driving over, when we could walk it with our skis in 10 minutes, maximum. I know. I did it the first day, when we arrived, and I realized that I had forgotten my gloves.

Our first clue that our plan for the day was about to change significantly was the first sight of the enlarged parking area; every space, right down to the newest ones the length of the village from the chairlift and gondola up, was taken. The license plates told of day skiers from Lyon, Geneva and Switzerland. Tour buses were arriving one after another and disgorging groups of skiers, who trooped up the parking lot in Indian file, battling with the line of cars whose drivers were trying, mostly in vain, to find a place liberated by people heading down after a morning of skiing. The parking lot attendant who greeted us confirmed our impression of the situation -- hopeless -- and we joined the snaking line of cars, moving along only to turn around and leave.

In fourteen years coming here, we had never seen this.

There were vans of Gendarmes and police cars, and we sat in the car, the windows down, while the line of skiers filed past us on the right.

"Serrez à droit et laisser passer les voitures," called out their group leader.

"C'est boucan," said one of the gendarmes, shaking his head.


Boucan comes from the old verb "boucaner", meaning "to imitate the cry of a goat". Boucan being a dialectical equivalent to the French word for goat, "bouc", it, too, is associated with debauchery, from which derives the meaning "big noise", since bordellos were often noisy places. It further widens in scope to include a "tumult".

"What do we do?" I asked Sam. "Head on and see if the line for lift tickets is a nightmare, and if it is, abandon or leave you with the skis to get them, while I return to the hotel lot and walk back down?"

He shrugged. When we got past the boucan, we could see that the line was civilized and short in comparison to the state of affairs in the parking lot, but Sam shook his head.

"I don't know. We've had a really good week already, and if there are this many cars, it's going to be really crowded up there. Maybe we just let it drop. That's a lot of money to struggle in crowded pistes and lift lines."

He was somewhat pessimistic. We mostly ski off-trail when the conditions allow, which they should have done, and the lines move fast. It was mostly that we had not anticipated the mess, and our four hour passes were going to get us three hours of skiing at most. Sam has a sense of the value of things, even if he thinks in terms of Porsche 911 Turbos and Maybachs, and imagines his photography, line of clothing and concept store will fulfill his every "need".

"Are you sure? You won't regret it if we drive back and head to walk around Chamonix, or something?"

"Nah, let's go. We've had a good eight days. We can let it go."

Maybe we're just a little tired, too. The skiing is demanding, if you wish it to be and ski it that way, and the last run of the afternoon yesterday, I found myself on my stomach, clinging to the vertical face of a mogul field at about on 80° pitch, nothing but several meters of straight slide below me, followed by moguls the size of Smart cars.

This was far, far worse than my predicament of several days earlier. Or, so it seemed to me, anyway. The other experience was entirely mental; this time, I was absolutely physically stuck. Move anything, and I was going down half the bowl on my stomach, skis and poles God only knew where, and Sam was below me, looking blankly at me, doing my best imitation of a leach on a bare thigh.

We had done the descent twice already, and many times over the years, but each time it changes, accounting for snowfall, temperatures, and winds. This particular bowl is protected from the sun by a large ridge of stone wall to the east and by its own edge on the west. You drop down into it, and ski a well-worn track across the tops of several moguls before beginning your way down, turning back left. It is an impressive sight from the edge. Sometimes, you hear someone say "Oh, wow" in whatever language they speak, when they come upon it for the first time.

I'd had no problem before and followed Sam down in, only this time, I didn't have enough speed and stopped just before the top of a mogul along the track, my down hill ski came to a stop perfectly perpendicular to the slope, but my uphill ski had other ideas and I saw it there, the tip pointing up the slope and the back treacherously downhill. I was bent forward at the waist, my head somewhere between my two boots. Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

"Sam, I am stuck."

"Can you turn the tip?"

"I don't think so. It's too far away, and all my weight is forward."

"Can you slide back?"

"I don't think so. I don't know if I will be able to stop."

I might have been able to. I tried, a little. I pushed with my poles, trying not to lose the purchase of my left ski while I searched for the right place to stick my poles, but with the chest about 20 cm from the snow and your legs practically spread-eagled, that was no small feat. I slid back a couple of centimeters and called it quits. My downhill ski was beginning to slip. It went, and nothing whatsoever would be holding me in place. I could see exactly what I would speed down on my stomach, backwards, sideways, every which way, gathering speed until nature or a miracle stopped me.

"The only way out of this is if someone arrives to ski down," I said, trying to look back up to the lip from under my right arm. I could just see a little sky past the bumps above me, and my stupid ski tip right there. I was furious with myself, and rather scared, and then I saw movement. There was someone just dropping in. A man, he spoke in French. He slid to a position just behind and worked to get himself below me.

"Don't move," he said. "Can you hold on a little longer?"

"Yes. A little longer. Thank you," I replied, concentrating on not moving a muscle. Not one.

I breathed rapidly, and tightened my abdominal muscles; my gloved hands in the straps of my poles were useless. Everything depended on my legs, my skis and my abs, and now my savior. He was working at sticking his poles into the hard-packed snow below my downhill ski. I understood that he was hoping that they would help hold that ski, but if I began to slid, they'd only buckle under my 60 kg.

"They will only bend if I go," I said.

"Don't move. Don't move a muscle," he said again. "Should I remove your ski?" I thought a second.

"I don't know. It might not be the best thing. What do you think?"

"It might not."

Skiers know that you are safest with two skis. With only one, you will slide and then be able to do nothing, at least in similar circumstances, with your booted foot. Then, there would be the problem of getting it back on there.

"Don't move a muscle," he said again.

I felt him take my right foot and ski and begin to lift them. I was going to trust him. I had no choice. I was not going to move anything that he wasn't moving intentionally.

"What do you want me to do? Is there something you want me to do?"

"Don't move." I continued to breath rapidly and rhythmically, willing myself into the mountain.

Who says Lamaze is useless? Try an epidural in this situation and see what that does for you.

My foot and ski turned in the air and I understood that they were below what had been my downhill ski, and I could just see his tip between them.

"Can you lift your ski?" I understood that, too. He needed me to liberate him.

"Yes, but please, don't let yourself be hurt."

"It's okay," he said. I felt as though that leg no longer even belonged to me. I could see it, but I could hardly believe where it was. The feeling of it being at that angle on the vertical slope was all I could remember. I looked at how it was positioned, and I told myself what I had to do to move it. His ski slid back and was free.

"Don't move," he said again, "It's okay." He was positioning himself below me to brace me and working his poles out from below the ski he had tried to block.

"Okay. Can you get up now?"

"Yes," I nodded, "I can."

"Okay." He slid forward to make room for me. I took a breath, stuck my poles in, thinking how glad I was to have them, and stood.

"Can you get down now?" he asked. I understood that, too. He knew I was tired from that.

"Yes, I can. Thank you so much. You are a genius."

"I don't know about that," he said, "I just did what came to mind."

"Well, they were exactly the right things to do, and you really helped me. Thank you so much," I said, letting myself slide down next to where he had come to a stop by Sam, who had gone mute. It occurred to me that the poor guy thought I might run into him and send him down the mountain in turn as he skied away from me the instant I arrived just next to him.

I was just relieved. I was a little shaken, and once again I realized how important the mind is. You can use it to save yourself. I watched him ski down, admiring his turns, and I saw him stop from time to time and turn to look back at me, understanding that he was looking out for me. I felt grateful.

When we got to the bottom of the bowls and prepared to ski over to Pointe de Vue, just above the Argentière glacier, I heard a deep rumbling.

"Sam? Is there an avalanche?" I asked, turning to look at him. He looked back at me, and we both turned out heads to the rock wall below les Becs Rouges and Chardonnet past the glacier, where a torrent of snow and rock was cascading down the face of the mountain.

It was stunning. I had never seen the face of the mountain let go and slide down into the glacier; it was like a far more dramatic enactment of what could have been my fate, had that very calm and capable man not appeared. Luckily, in such places at that, these are the only people into whom you run.

The few of us who dotted the slope were all turned to face this feat of nature, our cell phones and pocket cameras trained on the cascading mountain surface. It slowed and gathered force once, twice, and then it gradually faded, the snow had turned to racing water from the heat of the movement.



We skied down to Pointe de Vue and stopped to look at what the avalanche had left behind. There, I saw my savior skiing toward the Refuge de Lognan and thanked him silently before we skied on down and back to the valley floor. Our skiing done, although we didn't realize it, for this year.
....

Sam, against the snow and sky

Maybe Today, for Elbow Beach

Elbow Beach at Cagnes-sur-Mer, February 18

This horse that seemed the cream puff, gathered and collected in her first days at Gina Rarick's yard in Maisons-Laffitte, but who turned out to be a little something else again in the saddling area prior to post time on both starts in Cagnes-sur-Mer in February, where she took fourth place in each -- I haven't written, yet, about the second race --, is set to race again today in the 5th, the Prix de Saint-Valéry, at Deauville.

She lowers her big head down to your legs and then rubs it up the length of your body to say hello, lingering a moment at our lower back.

Hello, Elbow. 

And then, one day, she moved that big, old head away, only to swing it back toward my unsuspecting nose, stuck directly in the trajectory of her swing. Agata fixed me up with some arnica, and I learned a lesson about Elbow that she hasn't failed to drive home in the saddling area before her starts. Last time it took three people, pushing with all their might, to keep her in the box to finish the job and get her saddle safely cinched for Fabien Lefebvre, who was up.

I won't, unfortunately, be there to witness the saddling or the race. I won't even be able to watch on the television. We are still in Chamonix Mont-Blanc, and even if we came down from the slopes for the race, we don't get Equidia here. I'll have to wait for the phone call to tell me how she did, and sign up to watch the video later.

Today, she has another chance for a win or a second place, but nothing's ever certain in racing, or as Gina puts it "of course, there is always the unexpected, which is what makes it a race."

There is always the unexpected, which is what makes it a race.

That, it seems to me, is one of the finest quotes from horse racing, ever.

It's a 1300 meter on fibersand for 3-year-old fillies who haven't yet won, and they will fly on the fibersand, so Elbow should be able to stretch out early, which Gina thinks is to her advantage. She has a good top speed, and Fabien Lefebvre, who knows her very well now and likes her action and speed, is up again. All good for us. Ioritz Mendizabal, who won at Cagnes in February and then flew to Dubai to take a first place there a day or two later, before returning to Cagnes to race again, will be up on Caracesca. I really wish I could be there to see this match-up.

We're hoping for the chance to keep her here in France long enough to race her on the 1400 turf on the "coude", or "elbow", at Longchamps, the track the most ideally suited, in Gina's mind, to Elbow's style of racing. Besides, how can you miss the opportunity to race Elbow on her eponymous stretch of turf?

C'mon, Elbow, do us proud today, and, please give everyone a break in the saddling box, alright?
....

Gina Rarick at Cagnes sur Mer, February 18

Where we walk the dogs, La Moraine

La Moraine

And this is where we walk with the dogs, every morning and every evening. It's a commitment to them. We could leave to ski earlier if I didn't in the morning (or I could get up earlier), but the dogs, two Labrador retrievers, one 12 and the other 18 months old, are good enough to be patient -- and not destroy anything at all -- in the hotel room while we are up on the mountain, and so I feel they deserve their time outdoors for what they love: a long walk in the forest at the foot of the mountain on the groomed walking trails.

Fia, anyway. Rapide would much prefer that I leave her at home to lie on her cushion and prepare for her final days, in some 2 or 3 years time.

We also need to tire them out, so they will sleep peacefully while we are out. This favors the préservation des lieux. At 5 months, we could leave Fia alone in our room all day, without a single mishap. She is Not Marley.

We have decided that Rapide is *perverse. Sam does not entirely agree with this somewhat pessimistic view of her behavior of my husband's, but I do believe that I sort of have to myself. I lean that way, anyhow. Let's start with the moment I approach her in the morning with the leash. She is lying on her side on her blue cushion, and as I bend down to attach the leash to the D-ring on her collar (note that I bend down; she does not stand up), she turns to show me her stomach for a scratch.

No. We are going for a walk. Fia is already wearing her leash and ready to go. You would think that Rapide might find motivation in the possibility of relieving her bladder. I think she would chose to hold it until she died. Possibly of a major urinary infection.

Leash secured, we move toward the door. Fia is out like a jack in the box. Rapide staggers toward the opening, letting the door hit her butt on her way out.

Then, there is the walk through the village to the forest. If I am alone, as I am in the morning, I have one dog out in front of me a distance equal to that of the other dog behind me, a distance equivalent to the length of the two identical leashes. Both leashes are taught. I leave you to guess, to divine who is out front, eager to go, and who is lagging woefully, and somewhat peevishly, behind. Ah, youth.

Enter the forest. The first morning, I asked Fia to sit, as usual, told her to stay until released to bolt off and unattached her leash. I then removed Rapide's leash and turned to follow Fia, who had disappeared around the corner and up past Baccarat's tree. I know that if you turn and look at Rapide, she ceases her lumbering movement and sits. If you continue walking, and then glance back out of the very corner of your eye, so imperceptibly as to insure that it escapes her notice, you will see her trotting along like a much younger dog.

An aside, Sam did not believe me the first evening, and he was inclined to worry about her ability to keep up.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"I think Rapide can't keep up. Look, she keeps sitting down, and she limps when she walks."

"Don't worry. She's faking. She just wants us to turn around and go straight home. Don't pay attention to her. Just keep walking and she'll catch up. Trust me."

Some little distance further along the trail, Fia scampering about me, darting in and out of the trees in the deeper snow, rushing forward and racing back, I hear Sam again.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Really. I think she can't."

"She can."

"Are you sure?"

"Wait until we turn back and she knows we're on our way to her food bowl. She's fine. Just keep on walking, and she'll catch up."

Incidentally, she did.

The very next morning, well accustomed to this behavior, I turned my head 2° and slid my eyeballs as far to the left as they would go, allowing me a view of the trail behind.

Nothing. No limping Labrador. Nada. I walked a little further on, thinking "Go ahead. Follow your own advice" before I slid my eyeballs to the left again, in case she had gotten within a distance to be able to catch me looking. Nothing. No dog. I called her. I walked a few more steps. I turned. I called her again, and then I called Fia, and we went off to search for her. Baccarat had done this to me some years before, and I was panicked then. She was there, though, when I got back. Sam had found her lying outside the room door on the 3rd floor. She knew her way home, and the automatic sliding door to the hotel makes a great luxury dog door for the independent dog.

"Maybe," I thought, "Rapide is a lot smarter than my husband thinks."

I was disappointed. No Rapide when I returned to the hotel. I headed to the car, fed Fia, crossed paths with Sam on his way from the boulangerie to go pick up ski boots, stopped to speak with another hotel guest and pet her dog, and then I saw Sam gesture to me, looking up the road to the forest. Rapide. He took off up the street and returned a few minutes later, an unrepentant Labrador retriever in tow by her collar.

I was chastised. She did know her way back. So, where on earth had she been all that time? Who knows where she had, or had not, been looking for me and Fia.

On the second morning, I had another plan: keep Rapide on leash until well into the forest, after her point of no return. Triumph. She was tricked into her walk in the Moraine.



And know this, Rapide plays. Yes. She plays with other dogs, and she is most particularly motivated by male dogs.

She was a breeding dog, after all.

Here are Fia and Rapide, and a few of their old (Artisan) and new (Sago, Celia and Spetten) winter friends in Argentière. I missed getting them with the Australian Collie and the two other black Labrador retrievers, Clara and Lucy. Please note Rapide's intentional involvement and liveliness.




I told you. And, you should see the 14-year-old Lab who prances right along on leash next to her mistress, an American living in Geneva with a chalet in Argentière.

What did I do wrong? I mean about Rapide and my relationship to money and wealth.

At least my dogs are contented, even if Rapide would rather I not notice.
....

*Pervers, -erse, adj. et subst.
2. PSYCHOPATHOL. Qui caratérise un pervers constitutionnel (v. infra). Disposition perverse. Du point de vie médico-légal, (...) il convient d'apprécier dans quelle mesure un act pervers est le résultat dans l'intention de mal faire, d'une libération volontaire des tendances mauvaises de la naure, ou l'effet malfaisant d'une détérioration pathologique de la personnalité morale (Porot1960)

Where we ski, Les Grands Montets

The Mont Blanc and Chamonix from Bochard, alt 2765 m

This is where we ski, Les Grands Montets in Argentière in the Chamonix-Mont Blanc Valley, and this has been an incredible start to this year's ski vacation, our 13th or 14th here. I have finally stopped counting.

We began to come here in 1999, making the trip from Greenwich, Connecticut, a single mother and architect and her 7-year-old son. Or, maybe it was 2000.

I marvel that I can begin to forget these things.

Single mothers who practice architecture for a living, and who do not have trust funds into which to dip, are not as a rule who you find on the slopes of any of Chamonix's four principal stations, Brévent, La Flégère, Les Grands Montets, and Tours, but I had my priorities in order: food, shelter, clothing, transportation and skiing. It was a decision I had to make as my son came frighteningly close to passing an honorable age at which to learn to ski, especially for a mother who can still recall her first pair of skis.

They were wood slats with a toe clip and springs that wrapped from the front of the boot around the backs of the heels and held my tiny winter boots in place, the heels free to lift, like a telemarker's. The poles consisted of wooden dowels, pointed at the end that went in the snow, with red-painted disks of wood to keep them from sinking forever into the snow that never stopped falling in Central New York State. I was 2, and my father was pulling me through the snow in the side yard. The next year, I graduated to something more sophisticated than wooden toys, and my father installed me between his knees and the J-bar towed us up the bunny slope at Song Mountain for my first slightly vertical ski experiences.

It took.

I lived to ski, whatever the weather, and weather we had, being in the path of the Lake Effect, the Canadian winters blowing down from the northwest across Lakes Superior and Huron before achieving their full glory, sweeping across Lake Ontario and straight through our region. I skied with sharp snow stinging my cheeks and couldn't have been happier. Nothing was more beautiful than the trees covered in inches of snow and the ski lodge, the wooden floorboards beaten and sodden from dripping ski boots, the kind that were made of leather and laced up with no thermal qualities whatsoever, benches covered in jackets, mittens, hats and the behinds of skiers drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows and soup from the steaming lidded vats.

My little sister, however, had other ideas. On one of the worst weather days that Canada to the north could sling at us, my 5-year-old sister walked out the ski lodge, felt the sharp, frozen needles pierce her face and made the simplest declaration of independence in the history of human volition.

"No," she said. "I am not skiing ever again," and turned and marched back into the ski lodge. She has held good to her word, only recently fixing a snowboard to her feet.

I assume that someone, like our mother, for instance, was there to look after her because my father and I put our skis on and headed for the chairlift. Then again, it was 1969, his last year with us, although we didn't realize that yet, and a time before childnapping and molestation was a national preoccupation, and it's possible that my sister was perfectly fine with a supply of hot chocolate and a spot on a bench at the long wooden tables, while we skied. In fact, I think I remember him getting her a foam cup of the stuff. I am not sure leaving her there caused our father a lot of parental anxiety. She certainly was happier.

At some point, my mother faded from the ski trips, too. Her sister borrowed her seldom-used skis, and that was the end of that. I think my mother only ever minded in principal that she never saw those black Head skis again. 

Song Mountain Ski Resort, Tully, NY

Those gentle, wide hillside slopes are a far cry and a long way away from the pistes we ski now at Les Grands Montets, considered the most challenging and the highest altitude skiing in Europe. My son's first ski experiences were on similar gentle hills, grandiosely called "mountain" at Song Mountain, at Mount Southington, only somewhat more modestly named. I decided that my fondest memories were of weekend afternoons and evenings after school skiing with my father, in the years before he was with his other family, when I'd wait from the time the school bus brought me home to the moment he walked through the door from work and said, "You ready? Let's go," and I determined that money to spend on skiing or no, we weren't going to miss out on that.

It began inauspiciously in the winter he was 7. He cried, and I thought all my time spent debating the issue was a loss. He'd move a few feet, fall down, get very upset with me, himself, and everyone in the world, and I'd stay calm -- this was really important to me--, pick him up and try to tell him that he was really just about to have a lot of fun.

He wasn't having any of it. I suggested lunch.

That did it. The afternoon went far better, and he wanted to come back and do it again. We were mother and son skiers. We graduated to trips to Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks, stopping at his grandparents' on the way up the night before, and then I'd drive back down after a day skiing, lids heavy behind the steering wheel in the dark. It was worth it, but everyone was talking about Colorado, the powder off-trail at Vail, and a friend was building a house in Beaver Creek. Fabled names that I had long known as way out of my league and reach, but the siren song was strong. I began to research ski trip budgets to Colorado, and then, somehow, France proposed itself.

"Why not Chamonix?" asked the woman on the other end of the phone, when I mentioned it.

Why not indeed? I compared the prices, adjusted for exchange rates, and the answer was obvious: Chamonix. Airfare to Geneva, ground transport, hotel, meals and ski passes in a world-class resort, home to World Cup downhill racing and the 1924 Winter Olympic Games, the first ones ever, came in at less than a trip to Colorado. Plus, I'd get to use my French, take my son back there, and drink good wine at reasonable prices with 3-course dinners.

One overreaching decision for a single mother architect became a love affair, in more senses than one, since on our second trip, I saw he man who would become my husband, an old friend, and, maybe, just possibly, something more, again for the first time in 6 years on February 22, 2001 (which he considers our true anniversary), when he came to see us in Chamonix, and it was the waiter at the hotel in which my son and I stayed who blurted out our last evening at table "Vous faites un si beau couple! Tout le staff le pense. Il doit y avoir un endroit l'où vous pourriez vivre entre New York et Paris!" and our fate, after many ridiculous years and a couple sorry stories, was sealed.

On the plane ride over, I said to Sam, "On this trip, you're going to meet an old friend of mine, and if things turn out the way I think they might, we might be moving to France."

"Cool," said Sam, and returned to The Hounds of Baskerville.

We married on September 28, 2002, only the waiter couldn't make it, and we live closer to Paris than to New York;  a lot closer to Chamonix, but not close enough.

Sam and I have since returned solo, mother and son skiers, since Chamonix overreaches my husband's ski skills, and is likely to continue to do so for the remainder of his natural life. Sam, on the other hand, sprang ahead of me in skill and courage, and I have been doing my level best to keep up, which is a very good thing. Today, my skills grew like the Grinch's heart on Christmas Eve, three sizes, as I flew somewhat less flamboyantly down the slopes and over the red jumps in the ski park after Sam. I must credit the conditions hors-piste over past the black trail, Remuaz, for some of that improvement.

The first two days were January snow with April temperatures, the sun warming the restaurant terrace at 1972 meters to 18° C and the top of the "eggs" at Bochard, altitude 2765 meters, to 14.1° C, but the plummeting temperatures the second night froze the snow rock hard, leaving the bumps covered with snow "stones" that roll under your skis and on down the 60+° face of the mountain in some places, places we ski. We tried once, and swore off until today, when we thought it might have warmed up enough to give it a go.

We ought to have taken the absolute absence of skiers as our first clue.

We did not, needless to say, and skied on down through the first bumps to a rock outcropping and then down into a narrow bowl of bumps at an angle that matched the steepest inclinations of my architectural triangles, back before CAD. I slid along, perpendicular to the descent, and came to a stop, several meters behind and below Sam, who was up on another outcropping.

"Sam?" I said in my very calmest and most controlled voice. He turned to look at me, sitting, fatally, against the mountain on a very precipitous perch.

"Yeah?"

"I am a little scared. It's mental. I mean, I know I can get up and move. I know I can make it down, but, I'm a bit scared right now. My head isn't quite ready to accept that I can do this."

I looked around me at the sea of hard-crusted, rock-solid bumps, and wondered if I believed myself. Sam slid back down toward me, turned and negotiated a few of those mini-hillsides, coming to a rest some 20 meters below me and fell over sideways.

"That wasn't very reassuring, Sam."

"Just get up," he said, "You can do it. Then turn, and ski back across. You'll make it."

He said it very kindly, I have to say. He's seen me in these predicaments over the years. He was in nearly a worse one just the day before, so perhaps he was thinking of that, too.

"I know. I know I will, but I'm just a little bit blocked; I'm afraid that if I try to stand, I'll start to slide down and backwards, and I don't really know how far I'll go and how much speed I'll pick up over those bumps," I said.

He looked at up me where I sat, talking. If I talked enough and calmly enough, I would surely become calm and manage to get down off the mountain and see my dogs and husband again.

"Just push yourself up. You'll be alright."

"Yes, but I don't really have any purchase here where I am, like you have there. I mean, my ski could slide, and I'm a bit blocked mentally. I'll get over it. I will."

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"You can do it."

"I know."

I looked at the beauty of the mountains around me and my son below me, and I steeled myself to stand.

"The worst that can happen is that you fall, like I did."

That didn't seem like the worst. Not to me. I took a breath, tried several places to put my hands and poles, and pushed myself up. I did not slide. I stood there, leaning into the mountain, my tips pointed, unfortunately for me, uphill.

"I don't think I can turn."

"You can."

"No, I don't think I want to," I said, adding hastily so he wouldn't, "but I know I have to."

"You can just ski a little forward and then turn, there, where it's a little flat."

"My tips are pointing up the mountain, I said."

"Then slide back." I did. He waited, patiently. I stood there, helplessly. "Just count to three, and on three, do it."

It sounded so simple. I searched for the alternatives, and there were, sadly, none. I looked at him, counted and pushed forward to turn, and the next thing I knew, I was facing in the other direction, my downhill ski had held! I was moving across the bowl of bumps in the other direction; I could turn again, and again, and I could make it back to the groomed black trail, and when I did, what had seemed a challenge the day before was child's play. I had made it down from my own little hell on the face of the mountain, and suddenly everything was an hundred, a thousand times easier.

I was liberated. I flew like the Grinch in his sleigh down to Whoville and got the chairlift back up with Sam.

"Thanks," I told him before we skied back down to the village later in the day. "I think I made a breakthrough today, thanks to you for being there and teaching me. It was like play today, more fun than it's been since I was little."

It was true. I had begun skiing again after many years too poor to ski, too far from skiing in my mind to make it back to the slopes, and I had started again for my son. Meanwhile, the equipment had changed, the techniques had evolved, the destinations had made an exponential leap in difficulty, and I was not 18, but 37, and now older still. If I had coped with a morning of tears, Sam had tolerated years of a mother, finally struggling to keep up with him, offering criticism, advice, and encouragement. I watched him ski, and I realized that I didn't want to one day look back and think, "Too bad I never tried that."

That's what I thought at the top of the snow park, looking down at the red jumps. I had tried the blue ones. I could do them; nothing fancy; no tricks, but I could land them.

"Sam, do you want to do the red jumps," I asked him. "I think I want to try them."

He nodded, and took off for the first one, executing a decent iron cross. I watched him reappear beyond the jump and pushed off, slowed myself a little, approaching the point of no return, felt myself go airborne and then bump to the ground on my right hip, my left ski coming to a halt two or three meters above me in the middle of the backside of the jump. That was the only time I didn't land a jump on the reds.

"Did you see that, Sam?! Did you see that last jump?" I asked, coming to a stop next to where he was waiting for me. "I got some decent air! How far above the ground was I?"

"Not that high. Maybe 20 or 30 centimeters, though."

"That's fine with me," I said, feeling awfully proud of myself.

"Yeah, and I don't see that many moms doing the jumps, either."

"I think I'd like to try the blacks before we leave." He looked askance at me and drew his eyebrows together.

"You travel pretty far in the air before you land them, you know," he cautioned.

"We'll see," I said, gazing back at them. "I wouldn't like to not try."

The black, red and blue jumps,
Snow Park, Les Grands Montets

And these are my most precious memories with my son. I know that I have made the chain from the best thing my father could offer to me to my son, and I know that he will make that commitment to his own children. Already, he points the little ones with "swagger" out to me, and marvels at their ease and ability.

I like to imagine that he is seeing his children, one day.

Tonight, my knees hurt, just a little bit.
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Violets and crocuses, together

Survivor Violet on February 16

This is what my eye spied, walking back up the garden stairs with my dogs and the plastic bin filled with the day's wood for the stove. A single, lovely violet bloom below the yellow chamomile that finally ceased producing flowers of its own during the sudden freeze in February. Somehow, it provides enough shelter, together with the yew just to the side, to allow this naturally sown violet to go on, even as everything else that isn't supposed to flower in the winter has finally succumbed to winter's late, brief appearance.

I have looked for the common crocus, and I have seen nothing, though. It occurs to me as I write that this could very well be due to the deep layer of linden leaves I never cleared out of the planting beds. I shall have a look under them and see if there are crocuses in valiant but obscured flower.

I am back, and there are.

Nasty, vulgar Dutch crocus

I will never be so lazy in the fall again as to fail completely to rake. I did, however, have some sort of notion that if I left the fallen leaves in the flower beds, they would make some sort of mulch to turn into the ground in the early spring, once I chopped them all up. A lot of work, if you ask me, and not very practical since there are so many bulbs in among the perennials. They shouldn't be, but someone put them there a long time ago before I ever thought to come here, and I haven't had the heart to remove them.

Or, I have just been lazy about that, too, because I could have put them in the lawn and let them naturalize.

Or, I could have were there still a lawn to speak of, not having raked last fall.

This year, it would be "common, nasty Dutch yellow crocuses", as someone on Twitter called them the other day, in the dirt where the lawn formerly was. Actually, @plantmadnige, or  self-described "UK based garden writer & journalist, naturalist, photographer, traveller [sic], film buff, Wagnerite and angry old man" Nigel Colburn said "Nasty, vulgar, frowned-upon Dutch yellow crocus in my garden. I love every cell in their gorgeous egg-yolk bodies."

I stopped a little further down the terrace, on the other side, and picked some damp leaves up off what was sprouting below. Blades of another sort of crocus' leaves pierced the leaves closest to the soil, which I hoped were sending nutrients down into it in their earliest stages of decomposition.

The condition of my back today, however, reminds me that I had a very good reason, or at least an excuse, for not doing the raking. I had forgotten all about it, until I returned to the wood stove with another bin of firewood from down in the bottom garden and turned the top half of myself to the right to begin to bend and place it on a chair. The Fourth of July, Bastille Day, and Guy Fawkes Night fireworks went off simultaneously in my lumber region, accompanied by a nasty noise. I gasped and thought "Shit! Chamonix!"

My son and I are leaving on Thursday for our annual trip to Argentière to ski les Grands Montets, and I am not sure I will survive the car ride now, let alone ski anything, let alone walk our two Labrador retrievers, Rapide, who understands my suffering and empathizes, now that I am approaching her in age in dog years (we were contemporaries when we got her), and Fia in the La Moraine forest, if this doesn't go away. Fast. Skiing is still probably a bad idea, even if I do it on painkillers and with my teeth gritted, which sort of defeats the purpose and takes away all the pleasure.

I hate myself now for all those years of hauling heavy stuff up and down the garden stairs, to the car and the dump. I was foolish in my later youth of 40-something. God help me and my garden. My dog is doing better, but she's smarter.

On my way back from photographing the crocus, I happened to look at the little Aztec Pearl choysia plant in a pot on the stairs, and there was another violet, in bloom. Despite the plummeting temperatures Sunday night, after the warmer weather last week.

It fascinates me, because the larger plants in the pots on the landing at the living room French door disappeared in the frigid temperatures, while these, which planted themselves there from their seeds, born by the wind and the birds, are thriving, even under the sparsely branched and leaved choysia plant. I will never fully understand, but Nature never fails to enthrall and impress, even in my garden, and it is nearly impossible to kill anything, but grass, as hard as you might unwittingly try.

You'll just have to pay with the extra clean-up for the effort.

Update: Katie Sayers-Raschdorf, a former colleague and landscape architect, now with the New York City Parks and Recreation department, and the person to whom I can directly trace the origin of my blog, when the emails that began "Dear Katie, what do I do now?" as I worked in my garden in the earliest period became my "Dear Katie Garden Updates", as in "Dear Katie, look what I did today!" and, finally, The Sisyphus Journals, burst my bubble.

Here is how she did it: a Facebook comment, and here is what it said:

"They like is cold. Are you getting snow? Maybe throw something over them so the snow doesn't sit on top, but other than that, they will be fine in the cold. And if they do get snapped, deadhead them and they will come back around."

She is always right. Like when she says that all you have to understand, if you are an architect not prefaced by "landscape", or a plain old garden variety one (couldn't resist the pun), is that you plant trees with the leaves up. The violets that have bloomed could not receive a blanket of snow, protected by the plants above, while those that withered were in pots, covered in mounds of the stuff.

So, there is no magic in that; it's just the way of the violets, but, Dear Katie, how do you deadhead a brown and withered plant? I'm guessing it will come back from the roots.
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A Surrey Storm rolled into Cagnes-sur-Mer

Strictly Rhythm and Fabien Lefebvre
Cagnes sur Mer, Feb 2, 2012

What did you say? What's that you say?

Milly ran a good race today?

Yes, Strictly. She did. Your stablemate acquitted herself with aplomb and stuck a peg in the wall and drew herself up closer to the mark set by her illustrious lineage. Papa Montjeu aurait eu un oeil larmoyant pour sa fifille, la petite filly Milly. The Fleet Fairy (my nickname for her; she belongs to a group of three others) had made herself worthy of her eponymous paternal great grandmother, dam to her sire's father, Sadler's Wells, Fairy Bridge's pride this time, feet flying over the fiber sand.

Well, I'll be.

And so will I, Strictly. So will I.

Milly, as she's known in trainer Gina Rarick's yard in Maisons-Laffitte, drew the inside spot on the rail. She made a good break from the starting gate, and Fabien let her out, working into her stride into third and then fourth on the backstretch, along the Mediterranean seaside drive. The horses were stretched out and she was on the camera side, affording a good view of her work. She looked lovely. With nice action, fluid, she made it look easy. She was holding her own, but they would head into the far turn on this 2000 meter race, and then things would start to get serious coming out of the last turn to the backstretch. 

I was on an important phone call. I realized I had dialed at the wrong time only after my director answered. I had to continue the discussion and pretend my mind was fully on the issue, and I lost track of her between the turns. Then, there she was, in the sudden traffic jam that's the jockeying for position (now you know from where that phrase comes) for the homestretch, still near the rail, but the horses behind were surging, making their bid. I held my breath and listened to my director talk, dying to call out to Milly. 

C'mon, girl! C'mon! Don't stop; don't let up! 

I listened to my director, my eyes on the screen, my breath sucked in and held. Milly. The pack was beginning to stretch across the track, several abreast. The lead horses had a clear path to the post. Would Milly not give up only to get stuck? There was a hole, a safe hole. Fabien raised his crop and brought it down on her withers. I held my breath.

The surge around her continued; it was chaos, my director spoke, and I willed myself to concentrate better on two wholly separate and simultaneous things; Fabien brought the crop down again against her withers, and I swore I could see Milly, Surrey Storm, make a decision.

Once more, and she was clear, running, head down and stretched forward up the homestretch. I was answering my director, willing Milly, she was there with another horse, just behind the leaders, and then another horse drew up along the outside in the last 100 meters. She wasn't slowing down; she was running harder, if anything. It almost looked like she would pass the post in clear fourth position. 

Milly! I cried to the horse on the TV. I spoke to my director on the phone.

The horse on the outside, it had to have been the number 6 horse Tangoka -- I'd have known, if only I could have paid proper and full attention -- was pulling ahead and still Milly was leaning into her bit, giving up nothing, giving everything she had, and they crossed the post. I listened to my director, speaking now, and I was certain I had seen her in fourth position, just a nose ahead of Tangoka. I typed "4TH" to one of her owners in California and hit send. It was 5:30 am there. Then, Equidia posted the results: 1 - 2 - 5 - 6 FF 7.  I typed "FF" and hit send. And then the last two numbers reversed. Milly was officially fifth, a half a nostril behind Tangoka, and within two lengths of the winner, IX Elle, ridden by Ioritz Mendizabal. I typed "5TH" and hit enter and finished my conversation. 

I had a race report to write for one of her owner's, his eyes en France devant le téléviseur, when I cannot be at the track.

"Looks like we have us a race horse" came the reply.

Looks like it. It does indeed.

....

Milly with exercise jockey, Agata
Maisons-Laffitte, Nov 26, 2012

Maybe Milly, and morning work

Fabrien Lefebvre with Strictly, Cagnes-sur-Mer February 2

In about a half hour, Milly, as Montjeu filly Surrey Storm is known around trainer Gina Rarick's yard, will run again. Her first race since she decided a leisurely pace up the home stretch suited her just fine in her last time out at Cagnes. I stopped counting how many horses passed her. It was easier to count how many were still behind her, which was exceptionally exasperating, since she has magnificent papers and her music in 2011, her débutante season, was 8p 3p 3p 4p, placing in 3 of 4 starts.

Maybe Milly doesn't like France? Oh!, but this is nonsense, considering that Papa is French and won the 2000 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamps, France's, and Europe's, most prestigious race. Cela ne peut être!

Carla O'Halloran -- and don't be mistaken by her name, Carla is Spanish and Irish, but she speaks French with the best of them, and probably is --, who has been riding Milly in her morning work, will be up, and Gina is looking for her to give Milly a little lesson in how you run a race, not necessarily to win nor to place, but to work all the way to the finish line up the home stretch, and to get in a training gallop in race conditions. Information about her condition and her reactions for her future training and the races in which to enter her will come from this outing, and that is sometimes the most important thing. She'll be talking to Carla, who will be listening, closely, and Carla will be talking to her. Everyone will be happy if she makes progress, learns a little and comes back happy and hungry.

Odd that this could be necessary, really, when you recall her performances in 2011, but horses are athletes, and they have their good moments tout comme leurs coups de mou; no one is on all the time, and the trainer's work is to know how to reply and bring the horse, like the athlete, back to top form. And, like athletes, they come into their own in their own good time. Some horses are precocious, others take longer to reach their full race stride; Milly gave a glimpse of her potential and her promise in her first races, and now I'll lay a wager that she is growing up and preparing to fulfill it.

Carla on Milly, Cagnes-sur-Mer February 2

It's 10 minutes to post time. I leave you with the photos from the backside, the morning work, and jockeys Fabien Lefebvre and Carla O'Halloran at Cagnes-sur-Mer, the morning Elbow Beach placed 4th in her first race on le sol français.


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