First ski, 1973

With the recent holidays, I was thinking about my parents, Paige and Claire, who both died in Alaska. My mom was from Fargo, and my dad was from Moorhead. When they were first married, they were very poor, and my dad did something impractical that really annoyed my mom: he bought some downhill skis. I'm sure she voiced her concern in her tactful way, but inside she was probably thinking, "Idiot! Do you see any hills around here?"

But that was his dream, a dream that led them (and me) far away from Fargo. When I was 7 and my sister was 5, we moved from Houston, Texas to Idaho Falls, Idaho in the middle of the school year. We made a stop in Telluride, Colorado, where my dad was finally able to go downhill skiing for the first time. That was my first time too! (And yesterday's ski is the 40th anniversary of my first ski. OK, one was alpine, and the other was nordic, but skiing nonetheless.)

Once we were settled in Idaho, my dad decided that we would all take up cross-country skiing, not downhill. We got wood skis for Christmas the next year. My mom sewed gaiters for all of us, and off we went. None of us had any lessons. My dad would load us all up in the blue van, drive for an hour or two, and then we would pull on those itchy rag wool socks, put on our leather boots designed for 3-pin bindings, grab our bamboo poles and just start skiing through the wilderness in the deep light powder. I remember once we were traversing a steep slope, and my mom fell. We could not see  her at all--she had fallen in the powder and was completely covered! Finally, after digging around for awhile, he found her hat, and then he found her. My sister and I were pretty worried for awhile, but once we knew she was OK, we also thought it was pretty hilarious to see Dad try to get her out. All of us had our turns falling and having a tough time trying to get up again. The combination of being a novice skier in deep snow on steep slopes made for some very challenging scenarios.

It also created a strong bond between us as a family. My sister and I look back at those experiences as some of the best of our childhood. I wish my dad had lived long enough to see his grandsons on skis. He would have been very proud.

After my mom died, I kept her wooden skis and my dad's. I've skied with both pairs over the years, but the tails are pretty damaged, so last year I made a coat rack out them, which stands in our entryway at our home in Fargo (where I moved back to five years ago), a reminder of my dad's improbable dreams.