On the Edge

Living on the edge, chasing speed and the perfect line in skiing. Visualizing and feeling the perfect turn in your mind. Racing down the course, focused only on the sport. Mistakes happen, but the adrenaline pushes you forward. The finish is exhilarating, but the question remains: Can I do it again? Living on the edge is a cliché until it is not, and life hangs on a flexible razor cutting ice at 50 miles an hour. The razor springs from weight and swings your legs. Land the other razor and believe in it, or you will lose it and yourself. But you cannot think about this if you want to be fast. It must be ingrained by hours of sweating and cold. You do not chase powder or resort experiences. You chase speed, a faster line, the elusive satisfaction of successful execution. Bend the razor, release, land. It swirls around you in the starting gate, in the hours before the race, in the car, on the plane, slipping down the course during inspection. You wonder, how can I be faster? How can I be smoother? Where is the perfect line and what does it feel like? Warming up, you try to visualize, try to feel your body stretching and bumping and straining in those impossible angles. There are too many variables to know for certain what works or what does not. You can only trust yourself because only you know what the perfect turn really feels like. The sportscasters seem to think it is enough to be able to draw the line on a TV screen. But you know better. It is not enough. You must be able to trace that line in your mind, have an accurate picture not of yourself on a screen, but of being yourself in the future. Careening down that pitch at speed, pressed by gravity into a world that cannot be simulated. In the start line, the racers ahead of you plunge into it, that fast but slow icy scraping adrenaline world, where the only sounds are you and the skis and there is no thinking about your other cares because there is only the course. You stomp each ski, lean forward and click your poles before settling. Wrap your hands on the pole handles one last time. Racer ready. Swing with gravity and make that razor heavy to cut. Let the weight push you into those impossible angles. Feel it on your back and channel it to the razor and the hill and roll like a bowling ball down the line. Head up, hands forward, struggling to hold that imaginary perfect form in this impossible course. Mistakes are inevitable. Late coming in, but you make it up on the under. Bouncing through a rut, almost losing the razor, pulling it back just in time to fly over the knoll into the pitch with that hard right footer from inspection. But it's gone in a flash, not as hard as you thought, too fast for reflection because the finish is there. Tucking, unwilling yourself, slipping through the wind, over the snow, stretching every ligament to break that invisible line and it is over. The adrenaline fades with your speed and you phase back to reality, sliding to a stop. But you never want it to stop. There are questions asked both by you and others about your time, your technique, how you felt, how they think you looked. But there is a question that runs under all of them and sits in your soul, in the car, on the plane, under the hot summer sun of the off-season. Can I do it again?