Overcoming Fear: On Skiing and Writing

Last weekend, I braved the most significant ski hill I have ever faced. I only began downhill skiing when my boys were learning, and must admit, fear often holds me back. Oftentimes too, like my golf game, I wonder why I cannot quickly improve. 

Nervous, I climbed into the gondola at Mont Tremblant and ascended almost 3000 feet to the summit. I closed my eyes briefly,  imagining I was headed to Mount Everest base camp. This girl dreams big. 

Fridtjof Nansen wrote that skiing washes civilization clean from our minds because of its exhilarating physicality. That snow helps “strip away the things that don't matter and

…those wonderful, long, steep mountainsides, where the snow lies soft as eiderdown, where one From the tips of the skis…the snow sprays knee-high, to swirl up in white clouds behind; but ahead all is clear. You cleave the snow like an arrow…”

— Fridtjof Nansen, En Skitur fra Voss til Kristiania, 1884.

Cleaving the snow where no path lay before. Like a clean white page waiting to be written upon, and both equally daunting. By extension, I believe both teach important lessons on vulnerability and overcoming fear.

While at a play recently, my friend Fiona, who aslo writes, whispered to me, “I don’t think I would be brave enough to ever let others see my writing. Aren’t you afraid?”

“Afraid that they will not think it is good?”

“Sure but afraid of being so vulnerable and letting them into your personal life.”

I pondered that, turning her words over slowly in my mind. Sure, writing inevitably allows people to see our inner selves, but do you know that feeling of seeing something interesting, like a beautiful place or an exhilarating experience, through another’s eyes? That is how I feel about writing. 

It is no doubt scary. And though I do in fact write and ski for myself, I believe some things are simply better shared.