Sastrugi

For the record, I am not a good skier. I learned to ski with cross country skis on a frozen lake after I moved to Fairbanks, when I was 30 years old. I did a lot of stumbling and shuffling before I began to approximate the fluid motions of the more expert skiers I saw gliding past me. Eventually, I managed to get (marginally) good enough to go out into the mountains with a pack, and ski across crevasse-riddled glaciers and up on high windy ridges. But I was never confident, and adverse snow conditions (wind slab, ice, sastrugi) coupled with steep rocky terrain never fails to stall me out. More than once I’ve resorted to carrying the skis and climbing down steep slopes with crampons rather than risk a catastrophic fall.

Years later, with my family at the ski resort, it is obvious that my kids are, in a sense, “born” skiers. How could they not be? Their mother loves to ski. She practically grew up on skis. We bought little skis for the kids as soon as they could walk. They used to wear them inside our cabin, when our house had just three rooms, playing on them like they’d play with any other toy. They rode on Mom’s back in a pack while she skied before they could walk. They got to be very good little skiers, and eventually they all took up snowboarding. I decided that I’d never be a good enough skier to deal with resort crowds and steep ice, so I decided to follow the counterintuitive strategy of learning to snowboard, as well. By all accounts, I am now a better snowboarder than a skier, but that doesn’t mean very much, considering my skiing ability.

My biggest accomplishment as a snowboarder, I think, is that I’ve learned how to fall. Falling on a snowboard is really hard on the upper body if you use your arms to break the fall. My wife observed the other day that I’m very good at acrobatic falling. What I’ve learned, apparently, is how to roll through the falls and stand up again without losing too much momentum. She said it looks like a deliberate trick. Hardly! The bad thing with falling, you see, isn’t the fall itself; it’s the sudden stopping. And the getting back up. And the starting over. I figured out that it is much easier if I just keep on going, so I roll, stand, and go without taking that break in the middle. I’ve learned to make it look almost graceful. Except for Monday, when I went down backward on a steep hill and slammed my head (helmeted) on the ice.

Learning to snowboard in my 50’s has been an exercise in humility and frustration. But it’s also been an example of the power of persistence. A lot of skiers my age tell me, “I tried snowboarding - once.” I envy them their comfortable competence on skis. I never had that. I hung in with snowboarding because I had nothing much to fall back on. [Ouch!] For me, persistence has yielded progress, though not as much as I’d initially hoped for, and certainly not as much as the kids, who are now going off big jumps and down heart-poundingly steep chutes.

I’ve learned some things about learning, too. I’ve learned that new skills come with a risk of failure, that persistence is necessary when things don’t come “naturally,” that the best learning takes place when the level of challenge permits fluent practice, that I have to feel comfortable with the level of challenge, that I have to chose my own path, that occasionally raising the bar is a good thing. Occasionally. And I’ve learned that falling gracefully makes the whole process more fun and less threatening. I’ve also learned to set realistic expectations for my own progress, and to be satisfied with what is right for me so that I don’t feel too disappointed when everyone else is off doing more interesting things. That is the hardest lesson. Today I’m on injured reserved, headed for the hotel hot tub after my ungraceful fall on Monday. Even with falling, it seems, there is always more to learn. And minimizing it is, naturally, high on my agenda.

I believe that teachers should try to learn something that’s hard, every once in a while. And maybe even scary. It gives us some appreciation for what many students have to routinely deal with. But, of course, it should also be something that you really want to do, or why would you bother? And how often do students get to make that choice? Fear of falling is a poor excuse for not trying. You might also learn to fall, while you’re at it.

image: ‘Sastrugi‘
by: Martin Naroznik
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