Ski Bum Season Starts in October

I totally missed October.
A whirlwind of time, where my mind is focused on only one thought.
Skiing.

When will it happen?

And, holy crap, can it please be way sooner than it's really supposed to be?

There are days when my body can't stop shaking, where I literally have to pick up my shoulder and dig the bonfire pit deeper just because I can't seem to relax.
There are moments when you can ask me a question, about anything, and I will honestly have no idea that someone was even talking to me.

Moments when me eyes stretched across the horizon in the direction of the mountains, willing my eyes to see beyond their grasp.  Times when I reached out with my soul to reach futilely for the snow, for the mountains.  I can't focus enough on anything to read and would sit mindlessly scrolling for any glimpses of snow anywhere close to home.  Perhaps willing the season foreword in my mind.

And then the snow falls.  And I find that I have be once again been swept into the abyss.  Somewhere in my mind I am pretty sure I should probably check my email and pay a bill sometime, but all I can think about is when am I going to get to go skiing tomorrow?  What is my plan?  How will I ensure that at some point tomorrow I will get to breathe freely, that I will finally be able to take deep breaths, filling my lungs with clean, crisp winter mountain air.  My jobs are like ropes on which I dangle, sometimes being pulled back into the straight world.  But every time it gets harder.  I don't want to go back; I just want to be lost in the ski world forever.  To be in my head and follow wherever that my lead on any given day.

In many ways, the first month of winter is for me very much the most difficult.  My obsession with skiing quickly overwhelms everything else around me.  I forget everything, and sometimes everyone, in my thoughts which are, to be honest, completely overwhelmed with ski thoughts.  Technique, Gear, Weather, Drama, Resort, Mountain ... keep naming things that have to do with the ski world and my mind has touched that.  There is no balance until I have to grab onto to something.  Although usually it is my boyfriend who saves me.

It is November and skiing has officially taken over my soul.

It's scary sometimes, knowing that there is something out there that has completely overtaken your entire life and you are, for all intents and purposes, unable to alter the outcome.  I can no longer imagine myself in the Straight World, researching for hours in the library stacks followed by hours at a desk with a computer and documents strewn all over my bed.  But I have no idea what to do in this White World, either.  Because, whatever world I live in, I don't really care.
I only want to focus on one thing anyway.

I laugh and giggle and sing all day long.

I am that six year old doing whirlie birds.
I am that pre-teen skiing backwards.
I am that teenager bombing past you.
I am that old lady singing in the rain
I am me.
I am free.
I am skiing.


May You Find
    the Spirit of the Mountains
       Within You,

            FemaleSkiBum