Beaten by the snow

I was on a skiing trip with my little brother, who is sighted. The weather was great, sunny and around zero degrees. You know, warm enough to enjoy yourself but cold enough to still get those winter vibes.

When we arrived at the ski resort, the slope was almost empty, so I thought: okay, this is my time to shine.

I asked my brother to ski in front of me. As we had planned, he was wearing his black  jacket, and with the high contrast against the white snow, even I could see him.

I mean, listen, the jacket could have been red now that I think about it. Who cares? Not white is basically black for me.

That’s the chess player in me talking. Anyway, back to the slope.

Now, when I’m walking, I have my cane. I can swipe left and right, find obstacles, and understand what’s around me. While skiing, however, I cannot exactly wave a white cane around while flying down a mountain. At least, I didn’t do it like this. If you did, please let me know how that went for you.

So my navigation system was basically: follow the dark thing in front of me and trust that my brother wasn’t planning to ski us both into a tree.

I’m not a particularly good skier, but I find it extremely fun, especially on the occasions when I don’t die.

That day, though, because it was sunny, the snow had transformed into a state of icy madness, somewhat far from the fluffy delight I was used to.

At some point, while going down the slope for the first time and feeling like a blind kamikaze once again, I got sidetracked and fell into the loving embrace of that wonderfully hard ice.

Nothing serious. Just a little reminder from the gods of snow that I am not, in fact, a skiing master.

The problem came afterwards.

One of my skis had come off.

I tried to put it back on, but the ground was so  hard and the  physics of ski fastening had apparently decided to become particularly nasty with me. I tried a couple of times, failed, got tired, and decided to chill for a moment on the snow.

Yes. Chill. Pun intended.

Another skier, who had probably seen my glorious arrival, stopped and offered to help me put the ski back on.

Great.

Except I had sort of abandoned the ski somewhere on the snow, and for a moment I couldn’t find it.

That’s when the guy’s tone completely changed.

“Wait… are you actually okay?”

I could almost hear the calculations happening in his head.

Guy falls.

Guy sits on snow.

Guy cannot find ski lying next to him.

Possible concussion.

Possible dizziness.

Possibly time to summon three helicopters and an alpine rescue team.

So I explained:

“Listen, I’m fine. I just can’t see very well. But don’t worry, that went wrong many, many years ago. It has nothing to do with this wonderful slope.”

There are definitely times when I wish I could see better, like all blind and low-vision people probably do.

I have to admit, this was one of them.

Not because of the skiing.

I just really, really wanted to see the guy’s face.

Unfortunately, he didn’t call any helicopters, so there was no dramatic mountain rescue. And for the life of me, I still couldn’t convince that ski to bend to my will, so I eventually had to walk part of the way down the slope.

But later I managed to get the ski back on, the snow softened enough to give us some of those fluffy vibes our souls were craving, and my brother and I had a great time.

And somewhere on that mountain, there is probably still a skier telling the story of the guy who crashed, couldn’t find his own ski, calmly explained that he was blind, and then wanted to continue skiing anyway.