This is a re-post of an essay that was originally placed on the website/blog in March of 2015. Despite the fact that we’re into fall and things are slowing down, I’m currently in the middle of writing the first draft of my latest novel among other tasks currently on my plate. Just as an aside, the broken heel from summer of 2014 still has a bit of residual nerve damage, but it’s going away slowly. Sort of like a bad habit. Takes a while for it to finally disappear.

Word Count: 769

Letting Loose

With the Unfairness Gripes

Sometimes a person is totally entitled to bitch about the unfairness of life. It calms your nerves and somehow makes you feel so much better when all is said and done. The situation for me over the past two weeks is a classic example. I’m still hobbling around like a three-legged dog due to the broken heel last July and I can’t go skiing. At least until I’m relatively close to 100% and that may not happen till the Dems and Republicrates in Congress work together on something.

Granted, after a passage of time totaling almost seven months since the doc re-assembled a pulverized heel bone (13 pins-I’m basically the “Bionic Dude” in my right foot) I am getting better. From the ankle to the toes it doesn’t look like an inflated puffer fish in full attack mode anymore, and I’m even fitting into, and wearing my own shoes these days. Most normal human beings would be pleased with the current situation. Not me, as most of you know I’ve never been what society would consider, “a normal human being” so why not bitch about the present situation.

Things were easy until a week ago. We found ourselves in an extended drought that was fast turning the southwest four-corners area into a high mountain desert. Even if I could go skiing it would’ve been hard to finding any sort of motivation to want to.

Every morning you could pretty much set your watch by it-the sun would come peeking up over the mountain and present us with another in a series of cobalt blue sky days. We suddenly had spring like conditions two months early, and it just didn’t seem right watching TV and seeing folks at the World Alpine Ski Championships sitting in the grandstands and stripped down to their T-shirts.

Then it hit, and I ain’t talking about things in the pugilistic realm. Last Saturday a low-pressure system planted itself across the southwest U.S. and we started getting most of our snowfall for the entire season in short, intense bursts. Snowed off and on for the entire weekend seven days ago, let up for a day or two earlier this week, then kicked in big time again this past Saturday and Sunday. We got 15” two days ago, 8” more yesterday, and currently Silverton finds itself cut off from the rest of the world as avalanche control work has closed the roads in both directions out of town. A definite mentally unstable “Shining” moment for some folks, but a chance for glee from my perspective. That is unless I’m unable to take advantage and play in it, and since this is the case why not bitch and moan.

Let me amend my previous statement. I can in fact ski right now. Wait a second? Our dear readers are under the impression that the heel is still on the mend so you shouldn’t even be able to fit into a ski boot? I have in fact been able to squeeze into my X-country skate-ski boots for a couple weeks now. The plan is to get out on the track a few times before the season draws to its ignominious close.

A good friend of mine claims that since I’m not riding a chairlift to the top of the mountain, and then using gravity to do part of the work while you’re going down, skate-skiing isn’t really skiing. I like the physical motion of it so I beg to differ on the subject. A packed track isn’t the same as ripping through two feet of fresh snow, so in his defense he’s partially right. I’ll never tell him that.

Of course it doesn’t help matters that on clear days when I go to work at my part=time job, this beautiful set of tracks is staring me straight in the face. Whoever’s making them on the hillside behind the school really knows what they’re doing. The ski trails are precisely placed, beautifully proportioned, and don’t have any yard sale spots where the person might’ve crashed.

Obviously I’m a connoisseur of ski tracks on freshly snowed on hillsides. Always have been since I first started skiing. I’ve got these vivid memories of sitting in class during my younger years and doodling ski tracks in my bored moments.

Question is, why can’t I be the person making those tracks?

Oh yeah, still recovering from that broken heel last year. Swelling has gone down, but not fast enough dammit. Is this some sort of cruel punishment-payback for a past crime? Yes, isn’t that obvious.