After 30 years as a cross country skier, I've finally realized why downhill skiing has never appealed to me: it's because hills alone are not enough. For me, downhill skiing offers too much of a good thing. It's like a basketball game that's all slam dunks with no dribbles, passes or rebounds to set up the big plays.
On a good cross country course, hills are never the main attraction. The sights and sounds of nature are the largest draw. You want it quiet enough to hear the five-note song of a chickadee, or the castanet-rustle of oak leaves in the somber winter breeze. And wild enough -- this actually happened yesterday -- to run across a fresh green clump of turkey poop on the trail.
Downhill skiing has an assembly line mentality to it that's harder for me to appreciate. It's essentially a single-minded race to the bottom, where in Sisyphean fashion, a clanking chairlift awaits to forever take you uphill again. It doesn't help that many ski resorts have a synthetically landscaped air that makes them resemble an arctic golf course. Typically, acres of native trees have been shorn away and the terrain reshaped by bulldozers. Flood lights, manmade snow and alpine condo kitsch either completes or desecrates the scene, depending on your point of view.
What prompts this comparison was the cross country ski trip we took yesterday to Love Creek County Park near Berrien Springs, Michigan. My wife and I escorted a Christmas break crowd of six cousins and nieces, two of whom had no previous experience.
We rented the park's first-rate Rossignal ski gear, which was virtually new and ultra-reasonable at $5 for kids and $10 for adults. Beyond that, we had little in the way of outdoorista apparel. I wore my ancient wood-cutter's windbreaker. My neice sported a thrift-store chic wool overcoat that could've come from the trenches of World War I. But we fit in just fine with a crowd whose fashion choices leaned toward sweatshirts and chunky jeans. On a cross country course, the fuddy-duddy earth tone types tend to greatly outnumber their polyester peacock brethren.
Outside the lodge, we geared up under a cerulean blue sky dotted with junco-grey clouds. There was no line and the trail began 20 feet from the buildng. Then we set out for the green and yellow route, as advised by a gregarious park ranger who rightly pegged us for slow movers.
The course lay gentle on the land, little more than a hiking trail with natural snow cover. The path first dropped down to cross a footbridge over Love Creek, then turned into the woods where it hugged the lip of a heavily timbered ravine. It circled a marsh where a goshawk cruised overhead, eager for some careless vole or rabbit to make a fatal, but providential (for the hawk anyway) appearance.
There was little in the way of pulse-throbbing excitement. The meager hills, and you could scarcely call them that, would stir no downhiller's heart. Nothing much seemed extraordinary, save the enormous and venerable sycamore tree that we hugged for a family photo. So why did we all enjoy it so? What kind of dullard would prefer miles and miles of horizontal sameness to the mad-dash, vertical thrill of a high-speed run?
All I can say is give it a chance. Newcomers tend to underestimate the deep, kinetic satisfaction that comes from the kick-pole-glide motion that's the mainstay of cross country skiing. It reminds me of the first time I paddled a kayak. From the first few strokes, it felt almost magically intuitive. And for good reason. A kayak paddle, like a pair of cross country skis, comes encoded with several millennia of accumulated wisdom and design. It works right, and feels right, because the body mechanics were long ago perfected by our ancestors.
When so used, we can reconnect with the ski's original function: not just as a toy for sport, but as a means for transport. It's for this reason, 5,000 years ago, that some primeval genius invented a new tool which would leverage the use of his arms and legs as a way to navigate the snowy landscape. Even today, that's still the raison d'etre for cross country skiing: a walk in the winter woods made easier by the long, skinny flat things that you've strapped to your feet.
Beyond that I love how a cross country ski enterprise can be as seasonal and ephemeral as an Indian hunting camp. Come spring there'll be no signs at Love Creek (except for some little trail ribbons) that anyone on skis ever passed this way. And there'll be no footprints at all of the high-impact, hydrocarbon variety. In an age when even our peaceful past times can denude the earth, it's hard to imagine a better way to cross the country.
On a good cross country course, hills are never the main attraction. The sights and sounds of nature are the largest draw. You want it quiet enough to hear the five-note song of a chickadee, or the castanet-rustle of oak leaves in the somber winter breeze. And wild enough -- this actually happened yesterday -- to run across a fresh green clump of turkey poop on the trail.
Downhill skiing has an assembly line mentality to it that's harder for me to appreciate. It's essentially a single-minded race to the bottom, where in Sisyphean fashion, a clanking chairlift awaits to forever take you uphill again. It doesn't help that many ski resorts have a synthetically landscaped air that makes them resemble an arctic golf course. Typically, acres of native trees have been shorn away and the terrain reshaped by bulldozers. Flood lights, manmade snow and alpine condo kitsch either completes or desecrates the scene, depending on your point of view.
What prompts this comparison was the cross country ski trip we took yesterday to Love Creek County Park near Berrien Springs, Michigan. My wife and I escorted a Christmas break crowd of six cousins and nieces, two of whom had no previous experience.
We rented the park's first-rate Rossignal ski gear, which was virtually new and ultra-reasonable at $5 for kids and $10 for adults. Beyond that, we had little in the way of outdoorista apparel. I wore my ancient wood-cutter's windbreaker. My neice sported a thrift-store chic wool overcoat that could've come from the trenches of World War I. But we fit in just fine with a crowd whose fashion choices leaned toward sweatshirts and chunky jeans. On a cross country course, the fuddy-duddy earth tone types tend to greatly outnumber their polyester peacock brethren.
Outside the lodge, we geared up under a cerulean blue sky dotted with junco-grey clouds. There was no line and the trail began 20 feet from the buildng. Then we set out for the green and yellow route, as advised by a gregarious park ranger who rightly pegged us for slow movers.
The course lay gentle on the land, little more than a hiking trail with natural snow cover. The path first dropped down to cross a footbridge over Love Creek, then turned into the woods where it hugged the lip of a heavily timbered ravine. It circled a marsh where a goshawk cruised overhead, eager for some careless vole or rabbit to make a fatal, but providential (for the hawk anyway) appearance.
There was little in the way of pulse-throbbing excitement. The meager hills, and you could scarcely call them that, would stir no downhiller's heart. Nothing much seemed extraordinary, save the enormous and venerable sycamore tree that we hugged for a family photo. So why did we all enjoy it so? What kind of dullard would prefer miles and miles of horizontal sameness to the mad-dash, vertical thrill of a high-speed run?
All I can say is give it a chance. Newcomers tend to underestimate the deep, kinetic satisfaction that comes from the kick-pole-glide motion that's the mainstay of cross country skiing. It reminds me of the first time I paddled a kayak. From the first few strokes, it felt almost magically intuitive. And for good reason. A kayak paddle, like a pair of cross country skis, comes encoded with several millennia of accumulated wisdom and design. It works right, and feels right, because the body mechanics were long ago perfected by our ancestors.
When so used, we can reconnect with the ski's original function: not just as a toy for sport, but as a means for transport. It's for this reason, 5,000 years ago, that some primeval genius invented a new tool which would leverage the use of his arms and legs as a way to navigate the snowy landscape. Even today, that's still the raison d'etre for cross country skiing: a walk in the winter woods made easier by the long, skinny flat things that you've strapped to your feet.
Beyond that I love how a cross country ski enterprise can be as seasonal and ephemeral as an Indian hunting camp. Come spring there'll be no signs at Love Creek (except for some little trail ribbons) that anyone on skis ever passed this way. And there'll be no footprints at all of the high-impact, hydrocarbon variety. In an age when even our peaceful past times can denude the earth, it's hard to imagine a better way to cross the country.
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