In March of last year, I experienced an existential crisis that kept knocking me to my knees, caught in my fear of rejection and abandonment. At the time, I wrote that I found myself “at the top of the mountain after several weeks of slogging through challenging emotional terrain wondering if I’d ever feel the thrill of feeling good again.”

On the mountain that weekend, I learned that my body was up for the challenge of skiing after a knee injury. I also learned that when experiencing emotional upset, fresh air, good friends and activities that feel good help me pull myself out of despair. I now know that continuing to spend time doing activities that feel good allows the inconceivable to come to pass.

A scary conversation with myself

When I was 18, I stretched myself to try something new: be a ski patrol (at Nitehawk, the local ski hill in Grande Prairie, in northern Alberta). I vaguely remember the course I took or any injuries I attended to; what I remember are the hours and hours at the ski hill, skiing any time I could. It felt good.

When I skied in Jasper National Park mountains last March and pulled myself out of despair, one of my ski friends was a ski patrol and I kept thinking back to my ski patrol experience 34 years earlier. I started to wonder, is this something I would like to do again? I peppered my friend with questions to explore if this was a commitment I wished to make. Am I willing to put aside the time for the training? Am I willing to be in Jasper every other weekend during the ski season? Do I want to have to handle the reality of an accident scene and people who are hurt, in pain, near death or dead? Do I want to be responsible for their well-being? Could I be traumatized?

I was scared to be a ski patrol. I had a frank conversation with myself—my “higher self”—that went something like this:

Me: Shit. This is scary stuff. I don't have any idea how to do first aid. I’ve taken courses before but I’ve rarely used what I learned and I don’t know how to do this. Why would I even think of this? The idea of being a ski patrol is both exciting and scary.
SELF: Of course you don’t know how to be a ski patrol because you haven’t done the training yet. It is normal to not know how to do something before you’ve learned how to do it.
Me: It feels so scary. I’m very anxious.
SELF: It’s normal to feel anxious about something new. Did it occur to you that they will teach you how to do what you need to do? You are not expected to know what to do now, before the training.
Me: That makes sense. I get it. I’m not supposed to know how to be a ski patrol now. Not until after the training.
SELF: Right. Does knowing this make you feel less anxious?
Me: Yes it does. I feel like I can step into this and know that I will learn what I don’t yet know. That’s what the training is for: to teach me how to do what I don’t yet know how to do. I feel better about not knowing.

In the fall of 2022, I spent four weekends learning advanced first aid in a classroom. I spent a fifth weekend in “on snow” training, demonstrating my skiing ability and my ability to get an injured person down the hill safely in a toboggan. I spent a sixth weekend practicing chair lift evacuation and getting oriented to the operations of a local hill. By mid December, I passed practical and on snow assessments and was able to serve as a ski patrol in low country: small ski hills.

Practicing chairlift evacuation before ski season starts. Photo credit: Beth Sanders

My first shift on Christmas Eve 2022 (and a fake patient after we set up the safety fence on the right). Photo credit: Rick Henschel

Over the holidays I spent a lot of time at a local hills and met many wonderful people and kept learning more about this work. I also stepped into the next level of training to reach up to being a ski patrol in the mountains. This involved a seventh weekend of on snow training in far more difficult mountain terrain and an eighth weekend of orientation in the mountains, culminating in “the orientation run.”

Relaxing into a pattern

The orientation run is scary. It is the moment when your future peers assess your ability to do the work. Will I be good enough? Will I humiliate myself? Will I pass or fail? Another conversation with myself:

Me: Oh geez. This feels really scary again.
SELF: What is scary for you, exactly?
Me: Well, I want to do this perfectly. I don’t want to make any mistakes. I’m afraid of making mistakes?
SELF: Are they worried about you making mistakes?
Me: No.
SELF: They’ve been very clear that mistakes will happen, haven’t they?
Me: Yes.
SELF: So what’s happening? What’s the problem with making mistakes?
Me: Well, I’m not supposed to.
SELF: What do you mean? Tell me more.
Me: Deep down inside, I feel it‘s wrong to make mistakes. I’m supposed to be perfect.
SELF: What if you are making mistakes perfectly, all the time?
Me: I didn’t think of it that way.
SELF: How could you think about mistakes as being perfectly positive, rather than threatening?
Me: There’s a part of me that knows mistakes are helpful. I could chose to believe they are helpful and keep reminding myself of this.
SELF: How could making and understanding mistakes be helpful as a ski patrol?
Me: Recognizing a mistake is key to improving my skills. If I ignore mistakes, or avoid trying things so I can avoid making mistakes, then I avoid new knowledge and skills. If I avoid learning what doesn’t work I can cause harm, too. I could make an injury worse. I could harm others or myself. Knowing and understanding mistakes helps me and our whole team do our work better.
SELF: Who do you want to be?
Me: I want to be a person who takes in information and incorporates it into who I am, how I think and behave, what I believe about myself and how I carry myself in the world.
SELF: Who do you need to be to be that kind of person?
Me: I need to relax! I want to receive vital information about my actions, even my thoughts and beliefs. And when I feel threatened, I need to relax and look at the information and calmly assess if it is relevant. If not relevant, I can practice releasing the feedback from my energy system (because if I hang on to irrelevant information I feel shitty). If relevant, I have a choice to incorporate that information into what I’m doing. I want to be the kind of person who takes in relevant information and uses it, lets it reshape who I am and what I do.
SELF: Does this feel doable?
Me: It does.
SELF: What can you do to help yourself be the person you want to be?
Me: I will continue my daily practices to relax, ground and center myself. In moments when I feel panicky, I will take a deep breath and relax and look at the information I am receiving—because I want this information—and incorporate it into my choice-making. I can do this. In fact, I often do this.
SELF: So you know how to do this already? You just have to choose to do it?
Me: I do.

A friend on their orientation run, making their way through moguls in the trees, looking for the practice accident scene.

Arrive at the scene, set it up safely, assess your patient.

Load your patient in the toboggan and leave the scene.

Continue to transport your patient (beyond very tired legs and arms)

While taking the advanced first aid training with the Canadian Ski Patrol I took an improv class with Rapid Fire Theatre. I realized that ski patrol and improv involve stepping into a scene without knowing what I’m stepping into until I’m in it. I can choose to panic, or relax into a clear and supportive pattern present in both types of scene. In improv, it’s a base set of ground rules that propel a scene forward. As a ski patrol, it’s the primary assessment: a step by step process to assess the scene, patient, or patients, when I first arrive, that will guide me to good first aid choices.

I don’t have to look at improv and accident scenes with fear because there are astute, appropriately minimal rules that guide the choices I make. Once I practice and know these structural patterns, I can relax into timely and responsive action. My ability to relax into these patterns depends on my ability to relax. The practices I engage in to relax, ground and center myself are vital; they are, for me, the pattern behind the pattern, what enable to be my best me. Even when petrified.

Inconceivable

At 18, I was interested in ski patrol at Jasper’s Marmot Basin in the Rocky Mountains and I dismissed the idea. I recall knowing that you needed more training to be a ski patrol in the mountains. I recall feeling the idea was inconceivable. Perhaps I let the idea float away because I had a plan to go to university. Perhaps I felt the work was lesser than what I’d do from university. Perhaps I didn’t have the courage to change the plans that were laid out for myself. The why doesn’t matter; I talked myself out of the idea and went on with my life.

Dropping the thread, or even picking it back up, is not good or bad; I trust the path my life has taken. What I notice is that deep down inside, I feel the profound goodness of a forgotten, long-standing wish fulfilled. As I stood at the top of the mountain after my orientation run, with the news that I had passed into the ranks of the Canadian Ski Patrol at Marmot Basin in Jasper National Park, the 18-year-old in me was stunned. The inconceivable became conceivable. A few days later, she asked: What else do I consider inconceivable?

The unplanned “inconceivable”

I spent last weekend officially on duty at Marmot Basin. On my first day I responded to two incidents, communicated my actions and needs clearly and ran two patients to the bottom of the hill in a toboggan. I did everything I was trained to do with success. On the second day, an invitation to climb to the top of the mountain and ski the new terrain off Marmot 2, one of the peaks of the mountain on which Marmot Basin is located. It’s the terrain that has no trails and names on the trail map, the mountainous area above—for my whole life—where I didn’t even imagine to ski.

I said yes. I said yes to a ride behind a ski-doo, with a rope and a piece of wood between my legs (think waterskiiing uphill with skis on and snow blowing into your face). I said yes to a climb to the peak of Marmot Mountain and experience an amazing view. I said yes to a gut-dropping ski along the saddle, a long ridge between the peak and Marmot 2, the second-highest peak.

On our way from Marmot Peak to Marmot 2 under the morning sun. Let your eye follow the ridge line and you’ll see Marmot 2 In the distance, our destination. Video credit: Chris McLeod.

The inconceivable inconceivable

In emotional despair a year ago, a long-ago idea then deemed inconceivable became visible—a fragile snowflake of a dream to be a ski patrol at Marmot Basin. The simple work of relaxing into time with good friends in the fresh air doing activities that feel good and fill me with joy and delight allowed that snowflake to transform into the conceivable, then doable and accomplished.

Being a ski patrol became a destination I chose for myself. The only reason it was inconceivable was that I believed it was inconceivable. I stopped telling myself it was inconceivable.

When I imagined being a ski patrol at Marmot Basin at 18 or 53—or last week—I did not imagine I would climb to the top of Marmot Mountain, ski across the top of it and ski down. “Inconceivable” has another meaning: beyond my imagination, not knowable. The only way to find the inconceivable inconceivable is by noticing the destinations along the way, doing the work to get there, and when opportunities arrive, saying yes and dropping in. (Always with safety in mind and taking a few moments to enjoy the view.)

My work: take one step of any size at a time, one climb at a time, in the direction where I feel the pull coming from. I don’t need to understand why or how; I trust that the why and how will become apparent. I need only be open to the movement my whole being is longing to make, then choose to make my way.

Reflection

What wish do you have for yourself? (One that you are barely able to imagine could come true…)
What is a first, wee step you can take to make that wish come true?
What might that wee step make possible?
How do you make room in your life for what you can’t imagine?

Want to be a member of the Canadian Ski Patrol?

Here’s a link to training information: https://www.skipatrol.ca/join/

The Inconceivable Inconceivable