REBOOTING WINTER -- A SKI NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMER

Skiing.

I could think of no good and/or necessary reason to go back up there.

I didn´t have to risk humiliation, broken limbs and frostbite to pay the mortgage, re-stock the refrigerator or tune-up the truck. There were no bankers waiting at the summit, no groceries lining the trails, no service stations holding a bay open at the base lodge.

Yes, I could´ve easily passed the new winter's day just LOOKING at Cannon Mountain -- the snow-brushed dense woods gracing its pristine slope and the thin clouds winnowing across the peak of New Hampshire's only state-owned ski area. I could´ve admired it from afar, without dusting the cobwebs from my long-closeted equipment and schussing down the likes of "Paulie's Folly" and "Hardscrabble."

Yes, I couldn´t think of one good reason to impoverish, mortify, fracture or freeze myself for the sake of another ride in the chariots of the Nordic Gods.

Reason enough, for a humorist.

Thus, I succumbed to that same inner voice we all left behind in childhood: the one that double-dared us to stick our tongues on subzero metal flagpoles (come on now, be honest).

My first outing on skis may not have been a wide-eyed, pinwheeling skid down the backyard hill dressed in rubber boots laced up with string, perched on barrel staves anchored with clothesline, and clutching broom handle poles fastened with electrical tape to stiff mittens, but that´s how I choose to remember it.

Then, there were the last three things I heard and saw and felt the first time I attempted to ski. In chronological order:

1. My Dad hollering, "Bend your knees!"

2. The juniper bushes.

3. Straight knees.

Next comes a recollection of my first boyhood trip ascending a snowy surface on a rope tow. For me, tow ropes were more hazardous than any imaginable trip down, especially when the tow-ee fell, panicked, forgot to let go, and got dragged halfway up the hill with a left ski tip in his right ear.

Undeterred, even knowing that with a "Resident Days" discount I could ski all day and still pay the mortgage, I couldn't shake loose of the notion that by day´s end I´d be fortune-bound as tabloid fodder and a talk show headliner.

Yes, I would be the first New Hampshire man impaled on mountain shrubbery to get knee transplants from his own skull bones. Certainly worth an honorable mention in the Lifestyle sections.

Moving on to ski apparel: I had none. Sure, I layered my clothing like one does in snow country, wearing six sets of everything. But, I felt and looked like what happens when Baby Huey meets Frankenstein.

Fashion was a factor -- even with the imagined perils of avalanches, bottomless crevasses and the prospect of having my knee and skull bones meeting in a looping juniper bush hyperflexion and leaving my skis and poles scattered around the mountain.

(Bonus ski trivia: In veteran ski slang circles, when you go flying and land over here, alone and away from all your ski equipment which lands over there, this is known as "a yard sale.")

I didn´t care. I was warm without Spandex. Snug without Velcro. Visible without Day-Glo, and I´d already crashed into my own truck when I attempted to turn around in ski boots, so up I went.

There had been another change in the ski world since I´d last hit the slopes. I discovered, upon exiting the lift at the summit, that ski areas will avoid using the word "icy" at all costs. Down below, conditions at the top had been reported as "thin cover," and/or "frozen granular."

An icy rose by any other name.

This resulted in a two thousand-foot sideways glissade o´er a thin cover of frozen granulation, wrapped in a bumpkinesque cocoon of piecemealed long johns.

This trip was interrupted once about halfway down by an expertly executed application of Sir Isaac Newton´s little known Fourth discovery: the "Butt Over Bandbox Theorem."

This states: "Any cold and damp irrational object setting itself in a rapidly descending motion after a twenty-year hiatus in a rational warm and dry dwelling, must likely come to an abrupt, unscheduled back-to-front stop at least once before ski boot-hobbling back to the parking lot."

In practical terms, this will be the one time in your life that you´ll ever think of your body as a "heap."

Only Bode Miller, who polished his craft at Cannon, can walk in ski boots without looking like he's walking in ski boots. A rank amateur like your host can only do one thing safely in them. It involves bathroom privileges and/or maintaining a safe distance from my truck.

At my next winter "yard sale," I'm throwing in the boots.

Syndicated columnist B. Elwin Sherman writes from the New Hampshire north country. Copyright 2010 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. Used here with permission. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Electronic or print reproduction, adaptation, or distribution without permission is prohibited. Ordinary internet links to this column at B. Elwin's website may be distributed without written permission.