RESET THROUGH RITUAL Check in before you drop in. Sometimes the soul-o shred is just what the doctor ordered. Photo: Mattias Fredriksson YODEL Words LOREA ZABALETA SKIING ALONE BECAME a daily rite during the winter of 2021. I woke up early, drove the 15 miles alone from Bozeman to Bridger Bowl, MT, skied for a few hours, and then went home to work. Mornings when I once would have felt an overbearing aloneness became the start of something magical for my mental health. There was something both escapist and grounding in those early light pilgrimages. The thing about abuse is that it’s hard to realize it’s happening at the time. Ultimately my body knew before my mind. At home, I was a textbook victim—shaky, anxious, tired and hanging onto his every word about my worthlessness. On the mountain, I still felt all those things too, but I was out there, hiking the bootpack multiple times each morning, pushing through burning legs, even with his voice in the back of my head telling me I couldn’t. There was a big storm in mid-February of that year, right when I started putting the pieces together. I dropped into a chute and it fully clicked in a puff of cold smoke. Practically swimming in powder, I laughed aloud. It was a foreign sound. So was the light-ness in my chest, a feeling that stayed even as I was wheezing up the last too-large-for-my-gait steps for another lap. The pastime has always been a source of comfort during my years battling bipolar depression—a wistful memory of childhood inno-cence. Still, that winter, skiing was pure necessity. Feeling unfiltered joy for the first time in months almost hurt, like an unused muscle straining, or that first bite of food when you’re too hungry to think. I knew I would have to go home within hours, a place that had become purgatory more than anything else. The cage I had not yet realized I had the key to. But on the hill, I was happy on my own, sticking out my tongue to catch snowflakes I would tuck away to carry me until the following morning. A little less than a year later, my first in-person semester since freshman fall concluded, and I had planned a 10-day ski trip to Canada with some friends. One by one, they peeled away until suddenly there was no one left but me. I almost gave up, but I remembered my solo mornings at Bridger. I made a run for the border. Most days I skied it was below zero with wind chill. I didn’t make friends. I spent my days in a routine of ecstatic misery. Frozen nose and toes, creaky snow, far away from the constant human interaction of three roommates that had filled my cup after all the lost moments of the pandemic. But I was out there, skiing and free. Even if it wasn’t the same bluebird Bridger joy of the year past—I found a different kind of reset through the ritual. This time I wasn’t running from anything or anyone. Friends and roommates had filtered in, runs had become familiar, and I’d come to rely on both. I didn’t need to be out there alone, but even though it might have been more enjoyable to stay and ski with friends in the States, I realized I had lost sight of the quiet confidence I’d gained from being by myself. The first few days, it was horribly lonely. But run by run, it became peaceful. Or maybe it had always been that way; I just had been too miserable to notice. At first, I played it safe, never straying from clear sight of a lift. Eventually I began to push—never irresponsibly— into places where if I made a wrong decision, things could get ugly. Maybe that’s what it took, the rush of doing something you didn’t think you could on your own in order to trust yourself and find power in the silence, uncomfortable as that might seem. In those moments, it didn’t matter if I looked good (I didn’t), only that I could feel the icy wind rushing against my cheeks and sneaking into my helmet. I didn’t have to worry about anything except making it to the bottom, getting up and doing it all again.
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 2: Page 106
