The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [80]
After lunch, however, the Sun Valley slopes seduce us into our own love affair with brilliant Idaho sun, fantastic, well-groomed snow, and run after run—after run—of simply sensational skiing. The afternoon passes in a bliss as big as the burn in our thighs. Then, too soon, a few late afternoon clouds gather to flatten the light and tell us it’s time to go in. It’s our last run down when I develop a foreboding ugh in my gut that when we catch up with Dad, it will be back at the lodge. He’ll be working the crossword between cat naps, his shoulder on ice or his strained knee bandaged. Or worse.
Over. It will be over and the spell of Sun Valley with its special tradition of showing Dad to his best advantage—he is, after all, one of its longest-running and most ardent acts—will be poof! broken. And the magic of this day, this place, will be gone for Camille and me as skiers, daughters, who, because of Dad alone, in our lives always remember our mittens.
We schuss down Flying Squirrel, down and down. We arrive at the Warm Springs base and, as expected, don’t see Dad.
“He probably got an early bus back to the lodge,” says Camille.
“Or he could be still on the hill,” I offer, hopeful. I imagine him on the hill, weighting and unweighting his skis with excellent technique; turning left, turning right with his athletic grace intact and his famous rhythm, undiminished. I imagine his thrill and his pride and his smile when he sums up his run for us later. “It was great!” he’ll say, his passion for the umpteen millionth descent of his skiing career as fresh and fierce as it was for his first as a child in the ’30s.
“Well, I don’t know,” says Camille.
We both without thinking look to the mountain, and not on lower but upper Warm Springs, steep and moguled, there is, by God, a dot of red on the move. Dad. It’s not his ruby parka but rather his form that positively ID’s him for us—that particular Dad-stance and telling Dad-style Camille and I have known all our lives. The dot is moving—it’s moving fast!—and as it descends something dying in me somersaults into joy. Dad? Finished? The dot grows larger, and as it comes closer and closer and Dad himself into focus, I can see that who he is in shoes, or even barefoot by the pool, is not at all who he is on skis. His stance solid, his posture tall, with turns that neither wobble nor fall, Dad skis his way to us free of any giveaway age and as strong and fluid as any Sun Valley punk parading his arrogant youth.
“Dad!” I fairly yelp when he swishes to a stop and flips up his goggles to greet us. “You look great! You were amazing! You’re the best…the best….” My voice gets strangled by emotion.
“Are you proud of your old Dad?” His breath comes hard and his cheeks look rouged, but his smile, just as I imagined, is huge.
“YES,” gush my sister and I together, in unison.
“You know, you just might be the best skier in the whole world!” I manage to squeak through my shyness; it’s a mouse-peep I eke through my tears.
“Horseshit,” says Dad, somehow having heard. He laughs. “I’m just the best skier in Sun Valley.”
Colette O’Connor lives and works around the Monterey Bay area of California. Her lifestyle features and travel essays have appeared in many publications including the Los Angeles Times, France magazine, Travelers’ Tales Paris, Sand in My Bra, Whose Panties Are These?, The Best Women’s Travel Writing (2005 and 2010) and The Best Travel Writing 2010.
KATE CRAWFORD
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