Matt Duffy
New member
<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/13/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>M1 (Madonna 1 Summit Lift) <BR> <BR>It opened today for the first time this season. Killer, killer views from the top. Looking straight off and out from the back was like a peering out the window of a jetliner, _down_ at very low, smothering dark & impenetrable cloud cover with sunlight highlighting the whipped-up swirls on the surface with glints of light containing every flavor of cotton candy. Far toward the horizon, one white monstrous glowing face was staring back from many miles away. It seemed to radiate a strangely subtle feeling of warm content in the bitter cold winter I was looking at it from. It looked like the way a mountain might be smiling a relieved little smile with a smooth easy wink as if to say "I know." Mt Washington rose from the clouds & carried upon its’ ridgelined shoulders was a long sought for and very welcomed whitish yellow burden of sweet, pleasing snow. Food for the soul. <BR> <BR>The skiing?... time & energy limited me to two runs. Two spiritual runs of solitude, wilderness, and chutes of glorious & very surprisingly deep, unspoiled powder. 18 inches were in there, sometimes more, sometimes less. A foot and a half was a nice mean, a happy average to just let everything in the world escape into. All of everything vanished for an uplifting, Zen-like state of mind. There was nothing else, no other person, place or thing in existence at that suspended blip in time. It was a very familiar, yet brand new place. Trees and things and a towering, bulbous ice swelling were all there as instincts knew they would be. New snow, deep snow, _soulsnow_, made it a different land with the same old timeless scenery. I made 1st & 2nd tracks; happy tracks, & dreamy tracks. Continously linked tracks pointing straight down the straight & narrows that most often I hopped round n round with jump turns & sometimes sideslipped in days long past. Today those skinny openings were as ripe as ever. And that gully- the small opened clearing of a snow filled gully below the ice swelling was... well, it was an enveloping, heart in the back of your throat, whhhhpfffffsshhhhhhhhhhhhhsssssssss!!!!! <BR> <BR>Had to pop in a cd and skip to this song on the ride home; didn't even give it a thought, just did it: <BR> <BR>Learning to Fly <BR> <BR>"...There's no sensation to compare to this, <BR>suspended animation; a state of bliss… <BR>Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies… <BR>Tongue tied & twisted; just an earth-bound misfit; <BR>FLY!!!!!!!!!”