Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 10, 1994 TAG: 9401200301
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Cochran
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That's the beauty of this sport. You can do it most anywhere: on a hill outside of town, in a city park, on a golf course, in a sheep pasture.
You don't need lifts or lift tickets, you don't have to wait in lines. No fancy attire or expensive equipment is required.
What you do need is snow, which isn't exactly a fact of life in our region. But this winter holds promise. It might be remembered as the season when you could get your money's worth out of your skinny skies.
It is too early to make that statement for certain, but the landscape already has donned its white coat and fluffed it thickly several times, and the winter is young.
So I have been watching for opportunities to ski, like the other day when I visited the farm of my uncle and aunt.
I'd never skied there, but I'd mowed hay in the fields on sun-kissed summer days and I'd fed sheep in the wintertime, pouring grain into wooden troughs that quickly filled with the black heads of Suffolks. In the spring, I'd worn a path down the slope to a small pond where I'd cast a black gnat fly to eager bluegills while red-winged blackbirds sang.
My Uncle Jim is in his 80s. He sold the last of his sheep when the wind that dashes off the timbered ridges began to turn chilly in the fall. The old John Deere sits under a shed and the farm is taking on an unkempt look in the winter landscape. A single path through the snow leads to the chicken house where a half-dozen aging and ruffled hens give the appearance of an avian retirement center.
I drove my uncle to town for groceries, took him by the arm to lead him over the icy spots on the sidewalks, and reminded him that he had to go by the drug store for medicine when we came out of the hardware store after searching for a door latch big enough to stand up against the north winds.
I remembered times he'd taken me by the arm, to show me the lair of a big brown trout, to turn rocks for lizards and crawfish, to dig ginseng without damaging the roots.
Back at the farm, we stomped the snow off our feet and warmed our hands over the wood cook stove, then I went skiing.
Out in the meadows, I notice a car traveling down Back Mountain Road. It slows. At one spot it stops. Somebody who's never seen a skier, I figured.
The attention flattered me. Most times I prefer people not to watch. No grace. No style. No finesse. No power. Just shuffling along.
But the abundance of snow this year has helped me polish my form. My shuffling has made a modest transition toward rhythmic kick-and-glide.
The car begins to move again. It turns into the farm lane, risking a narrow, upward path plowed out by a 62-year-old tractor. The driver, a neighbor of my Uncle Jim, pulls up within shouting distance.
``What are you doing?'' he asks.
I think it is pretty obvious what I am doing, so I figure he is joking.
``Trying to break me neck,'' I jest.
But he is serious.
``Oh,'' he answers, as if he suddenly understands. ``From the distance I thought you were Jim out there fooling around in the snow, so I figured I'd better check it out.''
So much for pride over my diagonal stride.
by CNB