Reluctantly, I have decided it is time, time to hang up the skis.
At the age of 81, with bad knees, I can no longer trust them should I need to make a hard turn. With responsibilities at home, I can no longer take the risk of a serious injury, though I have never had one in my ski career.
This is not a decision I make lightly, for skiing has been a big part of my life for some 75 years, beginning as a little boy who was taught by his father, then the ski coach at Norwich University.
During my grade school years, the family skied each weekend at Pine Top, a little rope tow area in South Vernon, Vermont, where my father gave ski lessons in return for a family pass. We also took an annual February school vacation to assorted ski areas in New Hampshire, such as Cannon or Wildcat, through the early teenage years.
Later, in college, I had the opportunity to earn phys ed credits by taking ski lessons at the Dartmouth Skiway. My instructor was a member of an earlier British Olympic ski team.
In my U.S. Army years, I was able to ski on weekends at several areas in western New York State while serving at the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station in Buffalo and, later, in the Alps of France, Germany and Switzerland while on leave from my duties with Allied Forces Central Europe.
After discharge from the service, I accompanied my father on a business trip to Denver, from where we skied Aspen, Vail, Arapahoe Basin and Winter Park.
My first civilian job was as a reporter for the Hartford Courant, with hours from 2–11 p.m. to gather stories for the next morning’s paper, which gave me time to zip north on winter mornings on I-91 to the old Mount Tom ski area in Holyoke.
That was followed by a winter on the paid ski patrol at Mad River Glen in Vermont, followed by three years as a teacher at the Hayden School for Boys in Dorchester, where I took groups of state wards out each day to the Blue Hills Ski Area in nearby Canton. The experience was a smash hit, giving me celebrity status among the boys.
My next teaching job was at Masconomet Regional High School, where I was also the varsity ski coach for several years.
By the time my own two sons were ready to learn, we headed over to the Amesbury Ski Hill/Atlantic Forest Ski Area where, in the pattern of my father, the family skied for free in return for my services as a ski patrolman.
In older age, I still skied occasionally with my sons and grandsons at assorted areas around New England, such as Jiminy Peak or Mount Wachusett in western Massachusetts. The outings are now etched into the family memory bank.
But my most recent destination was Gunstock Mountain in Gilford, New Hampshire, where a group of similar-aged retirees skied with a golden pass, issued for a one-time $25 to those over 70 on the mountain’s 70th anniversary.
Some of us skied several days a week, some only once. An email chain outlined the schedule, based on weather, ski conditions and other obligations. At least some part of the group was most likely there, arriving early to catch the first chair and to lay down the first tracks in the newly groomed corduroy snow.
While preferences varied from making nonstop, top-to-bottom runs to making rest stops along the way, the group usually hung together by pausing at the bottom for all to reassemble. Riders matched up on the lift at random, taking the opportunity to socialize, whether seriously or more likely with good-natured kidding, on the way up for the next run.
A burst of hard skiing led to a midmorning coffee break, followed by an hour or more of skiing and a late lunch. Most then headed home, though once in awhile individuals would take a few extra runs after lunch.
‘Twas an odd cast of retired characters – a shipyard worker, a meat cutter, a pharmacist, a rock band bass player, two teachers, a periodicals circulation manager, a granite monument worker, a bank office manager, a printing press parts salesman, an electrician … but one with matching skills and schedules to bring a group of skiers together for a string of “glory days” on the slopes, with Mount Washington looming on the horizon and Lake Winnipesauke spreading out below.
I shall miss both the camaraderie and the sensation of gliding down a mountain, lost in the moment, scouting the terrain ahead, adjusting on the fly.
“There’s a feeling of flying, being free, on a good ski day,” my mother once commented at the end of her career. “It takes you out of your problems quickly. I miss that.”
But that had to end for me, too, at some point.
Last year, at the age of 80, I took one last ceremonial run to the local Bradford Ski Area, just to say that I had skied into my 80s. I had a picture taken by a friendly ski patrolman to commemorate the moment.
An old ski poster reads, “You don’t stop skiing when you get old, you get old when you stop skiing.”
I still wrestle with that conundrum.
Stuart Deane lives in Newburyport.