Some Moods of Montana
ONE is caught up to the sunniest upland in Switzerland in one of those amusing funiculars which look like toys but .behave like Titans. The Rhone Valley was in fog when I left Sierre, but soon we crept out of it, into the sunshine first -and then into a dazzle of snow and forty degrees of frost. After lunch I had my first ski-ing lesson.
As an absolute novice, my impressions may interest other beginners, for "the impact of a fresh mind," as the late St. Loe -Strachey used to- say, lends - colour and contour to a .subject which experts with their superior knowledge are apt to flatten, even when elucidating it. To begin with, then, ski-ing is certainly the best sport I know, and I have tried a good many ; secondly, it trains the mind as well as the body, exalting hthriility as well as health. The snow levels us all who first try to slide on it : the mighty are humbled therein and the haughty collapse.
Any book can tell you what clothes to wear, what places to visit, how to strap on your skis and comport yourself on these curious planks. I shall not deal with such practical particulars, but rather confine my com- ments .to a little mild psychology. Ski-ing, I want to emphasize, is not a stern and dangerous business, like pig- sticking or shooting grizzly bears. Thirty thousand English people took part in winter sports last year, and more will do so this season. Amongst them you will find -many beginners and the middle-aged as well • as (athletes. It- is quite unnecessary to hurtle over preci- pices, or to kneel before the serpentine lure of the " tele- mark." Two of my constant companions were a beginner of fifty-six and an expert of sixty ; the third, it is true, was Aurea, who is in her teens and also a beginner. • After a week's practice we all three sallied forth on an excursion with the veteran, and if Aurea went faster than her plders and balanced better, that was the privilege of youth : She cannot possibly have enjoyed herself more. • My first afternoon I took it easy, for the height of Montana. (6,000 feet) and the unusual cold (minus. eight degrees Fahrenheit) surprised my heart, and after half an hour's practice, during which time. I was • chiefly in a recumbent position, I had had enough. It is as- well to remember that many unaccustomed muscles are brought into play from the first moment one -buckles on one's harness to the, quickly succeeding instant when one falls down in it. Hasten slowly, therefore. Next morning, however, I was full of energy and worked hard for three hours. • Perhaps twenty minutes were devoted to sliding and the remainder to climbing. In this respect ski-ing is like life ; it: is an affair- of instants spun to hours of pre- paratory toil, with the bright seconds as "only cause of all these tears" and pleasure too. To multiply these moments and eliminate. some of the climbing, -the next day I &wended by the route of the funicular and came up by train. While doing this I happened to see a famous ski-er in action, and that brief and blinding glimpse of him going down- a slope in six minutes which took sixty of my stumbles, showed me possibilities so entrancing that I am afraid.tnu.ch of theleisure that buight spend in improving my mind will now be devoted to learning how to skim the snow in seven-league boots.
He came by me in a blue swirl, stemming right-handedly to avoid a ditch ; then, with speed diminished but by no means checked, lie brought his feet together and glided on giddily, first on one foot and then on the other, ap- parently stepping this way and that, and floating, floating, floating over the snow until he grew tiny and was lost to my astonished gaze. It was all over so soon that only later did I get some inkling of the balance and nerve required for such fast work. But on a gentle and easy slope a beginner, once poised and relaxed, may acquire the floating feeling. One seems to transcend friction and gravity. Vanished are the ills and ties of earth. One goes down like a ghost, or as the stars go down their path in the dustless fields of heaven. In all other forms of motion (except perhaps close-hauled in my cat-boat- and even here the delicious ripple reminds me that sea and sail are at cross-purposes) there is an effort or a jerk. The slip-stream and drone of the aeroplane or fast car, the lift of the loins of a good horse at a fence, the cat-boat's gibing boom—there is tension in these pleasant things. But in ski-ing you may worship at the white altar of speed with nothing earthly between. For a few seconds your feet shod with splendour, you feel you are one with the rhythm of cosmos, keeping your path as a planet fares in space, until Mother Earth, angered at such presumption, huddles you up in a quilt of snow.
In short, you sit down. After your beautiful but brief progression, having no efficient braking . system (for snow ploughing, telemarking, and the jump Christiania are learnt only by degrees) you will almost certainly fall as gracefully as possible upon your hinder part. It is not dignified, but it is thoroughly effective and not at all painful. Also it is quite inevitable. He cannot ski who will not fall.
Dawn is late in the High Alps, too late for me who fret for the morning light that is to see our first excursion. Over the peaks by Zermatt it is freezing and there is a hard, clear sky, like a ". sword-blade's blue." The Rhone Valley is a lagoon of ink ; as the day increases it turns to a sea of down. The firs are still swathed in the black of night. Very slim they look, these postulants of a rite that shall soon deck them in their proper green. They wait, attentive, for heralds have told them of a coming. Then a sapling lowers the cross on his brow and sends a shower of white from his branches, then another, and a third. They unveil at the coming of their Lord. From dawns before human eyes could see the work of their Creator these things have continued. Every time it is the same, yet always different—every morning since the Alps were children. Sometimes under the thunderclouds of the west wind, or a strawberry bank of snow, the morning miracle grows slowly to its effulgence ; some- times there is a riot of flame as the young sun leaves the revels of night, with spearmen dancing on the peaks; sometimes—to-day, for instance—a sky of steel changes, as I draw a single breath, to a canopy of amethyst and onyx.
I ring for café au lait. My pack is ready and soon shouldered. A couple of neat packages contain lunch (just sandwiches, eggs, cheese, but what ambrosia when eaten on the summit of Combieres !) and there is ski-wax, tobacco, sweater and scarf and so on. We trudge off slowly, the four of us, across the snow, which glitters in the low light with quadrillions of diamonds.
Light and more light ! Already there is almost too much of it for my sun-starved eyes. I put on dark spectacles. I take off my coat. There is hoar-frost on the firs and I am sweating. The veteran stops to rub his face in snow, telling Aurea it is a beauty treatment, but Aurea does not need it.
We have been climbing a quarter of an hour, and are at the top of the bob-sleigh run. The village, our hotel, the golf-links (now nursery snow for ski-ers)—all are spread out on the edge of an ocean of cottonwool which has covered the valley from Loeche to Lenk and beyond; Across it stands the rampart of the Alps, with turrets such as Bella Tola, the Weisshorn and distant peaks by Mont Blanc. Above, a fir-wood cuts off the view of the mountain we are climbing. There is no sound, but a glory of colour against a foreground of white, green, light green, violet shade, ultramarine and turquoise and crushed strawberry sky, melting my heart for joy of their harmonies. (Yet I dare not think I see the true faces of the hills—has anyone living in this world of illusion seen them as they really are ?) My friends the firs preserve their sacerdotal air. When we reach them, we seem to pass into a Cathedral world. It is cool in these aisles and grateful to the eyes. Aurea feels as I do. These trees are rapt in a wonder that we can but partly know. They are simpler and nearer to God than we. They keep so still.
Strips of hide have been fixed to the soles of our skis. We can climb steeply in them, but slowly, nor would I go faster, for I am enjoying every step. Delightful even is the toil of our ascension. (And this I would not have believed, had I not proved how pleasant such exercise can be for its own sake.) When we reach Combieres (it is two hours' climb) I throw down my pack at the cow-byre where we are to lunch and go on to a col from which I shall see Mont Blanc. But before getting there I take off all my upper clothes and tie them round my neck. The bare skin feels delicious when rubbed with a handful of snow. Afterwards the veteran told me that a man who did this died of sunstroke a day later, but my hour has not yet come. I live to see Mont Blanc and enjoy a voraciously swallowed lunch. Later, I slide upon paradisal paths, fall into various purgatories, eat a large tea and dinner, dance half the night and ski the remainder of it in my dreams. So the sun is kind.
At two o'clock, with the suddenness of a camera shutter, a cloud darkens the day and a cold wind rises. We are in shirt sleeves one moment, the next shivering in every garment we possess, and that in spite of the tea and brandy our noble veteran has brought. He leads the way down, and falls, for the first time in years, while telemarking in a patch of crusted snow. Then say I, summoning Dutch and other courage : "Where a man of sixty with a very heavy pack can go, I can surely follow ! " I can't, however. As I pick up my spectacles and sticks, Aurea floats by most prettily, falling, however, just as she comes to a standstill, as all of us beginners so often and so • unneeessarilydo. We have come down five :hundred feet in some ten seconds, or so it seems. Never mind, we are boil- ing hot again and the best is yet to be. A kind of super- switchback is before us, a good practice run. " Aurea's red cap sinks below the crest—she is down—no, she is swim= ming yet ! I follow and instantly my left foot slides away from the other. But by a supreme effort I bring them to gether and repeat the magical formula," This is very slow,", which Mr. Caulfield says in his book can be relied on to cure terror. It does. Muscles relax, knees flex, the whole body sings to this effortless glory of motion.
Aurea stands at gaze. I feel like a whack ! That time I fell forward, which is much more uncomfortable than falling backwards.
How shall I tell of our triumphs and reverses, of our heroic plunges and cautious zigzags, of the veteran's kindness and of Aurea's dash ? "What do we do about that house ? " the latter asks, finding one blocking her path. Before we reach it, however, we are ready to jump over an Alp if it should presume te get in the way.
The sun must have been ski-ing too, for it is evening. The cottonwool that lies on all the poor creatures of the valley is becoming pink. Gorgeous shafts of light shoot up through a mist, which rises as if to meet us. We slide back to the hotel, tired but well content, watching the quickly changing light. I would lose no minute of such a happy day, so directly after tea I am on the balcony again from which I saw the dawn. As if exhausted by so much loveliness, the snow looks sleepy. It lies a very pale blue across the golf-links. All at once, unexpectedly, the mist parts and a voiceless worship takes the evening. Colour succeeds colour so quickly that the eye cannot follow. With a glimmer of violet, the sun sets.
F. YEATS-BROWN,
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