Touching the Void

White. That's all it was. Not black. And yet, in a way it was black. It was so... so incredibly white that it seemed almost impossible that the very concept of white was not possible, or maybe that any other color than white would be impossible.

Tiny. Deep. Almost like the letter i in the word "ominous"; discreet and almost unnoticeable. But still there. Still very there. Tiny. Deep. Shards. Hitting, biting my face like a punch in the face from a friend. Constant scratching. My head, with it's watery eyes, wanted to occupy the white with a purpose, trying to help my brain figure out what's going on. But no, the silver needles amidst the incomprehensible white void didn't want my head in there. Stop that, it seemed to communicate. But that's what I was saying in my head.

Pain. Not quite burning, maybe more like pressure. It felt like a... almost a yellow. Yes that's what it was. A horizontal yellow line, thick in the middle but evening out. That's what my feet felt like. I wanted the boots off. Off. Off. OFF. I moaned in my head, a head that couldn't quite feel the black wool hat feebly covering my forehead, let alone the thin red hood. And then my eyes. Watery from the sneering wind, and from me holding my left one close. I barely opened it, to find blurriness and, well, flurriness. But then of course, there was little point in opening my eyes, as it was just white.

White.

I stood at the top of a hill, not knowing how long it was, by myself. I couldn't see anyone else behind me. I was on a mountain. Pair o' bulky boots, squeezing my calves, attached to some used skies, which sifted around the soft, rapid snow. My lower body wasn't cold, neither was my upper really. It was just... white and unnerving.

A few minutes ago I had seen Zach, who was skiing with Simon. But looking down after only a minute or so, he was gone. And all I could see, literally all it was, was a billowing white... existence. I muttered the s-word under my breath and glared out. Be brave, man. You can do this. It's just... snow. Was it flat? Was it a wall? Was it some cosmo-type milk? Where was down? Where was up? Left? Right? It was impossible to tell.

Was I scared? You could say that. I wasn't like hyperventilating or nothin', but it wasn't the most relaxing thing I've experienced.

I took a deep breath and pushed out with my skies down into the unknown. Then again, I wasn't even sure if it was down.

Ice again. Sharp. Pain. The wind was blowing from my left, and hit my side with surprising force. But I had sort of gotten used to it. The boots were too heavy, the snow and nothingness too controlling. I fell over, the skies partially cutting through a loose bank of snow. It wasn't painful to fall down, just a little annoying. My eyes were practically streaming with tears, the wind so strong. I laid there perhaps for longer than normal, but gathered up confidence to boost myself up. Ok, that's ok.. let's just be tough here. Push with the left, then the right, grab some ground with the poles and gather momentum.

Where the hell was I going? It was so white, so full of nothing, that I only just found out if I was going on a small bump or something till it actually happened. That is, I literally could not see where or what I was doing. Straight? Left? Right? I could see maybe a feet or two in front of me, and the slight grey trees showing up on the sides, but had to be looking down at my skies. Again, my vulnerable face being constantly irritated with tiny silver gugashoons (new word) holding pick-axes. And cleets. And broken glass bottles.

I continued skiing down the abyss, and fell down again. This time my boots popped out of my skies, and I glanced back up the hill. I could identify a dark shape lumbering down the white, its human-like motions a small comfort in the white.

It was Steve. Simon's dad. Who was pretty nice I guess. He had a grey-ish black beard-like feature and an English accent. He wasn't all "tea and crumpets" but it was still not quite American. We had sort of gone up the lift of this hill together, except he missed the lift after me so was a little delayed. He was a much better skier and stopped in front of me. I got up and let him help me clean the "crap" (he referred the snow stuck to the bottom of your boots and whatnot as that word) off my boots. I did it myself mostly, not being a complete sissy, but he did help. "Thanks," I muttered feebly, fighting back a moan or yell of rage from the pain.

The rest of the hill wasn't so bad, except mostly just bland and abstract. I skied sort of in front of Steve, and eventually saw a tiny shack-type thing and a darker shade in the white, meaning the little mountain huts. I skidded to a halt, the lines protruding from my boots shuddering in the snow, struggling to find a hold. The lift was to my right, there were a few people walking/skiing around as it was when I got on the lift, and I had survived.

It wasn't quite as white down there. You could see part of your surroundings, but around you it still wasn't crystal clear.

"You want a hot chocolate or something? Let's go in one of the restaurants..." Steve leaned his skies against the given wooden structure and I followed suit, though had to be shown how to put my gloves up.

"Oh uh yeah sure..." We crunch crack craft -ed across the snow, stomping our boots of "crap" in the tiny restaurant/cafe and the heat seeped into my fingers immediately. It was pretty packed, with a few tables and chairs jumbled next to the walls, the counter to your right.

Steve found a table in the left corner and we sat down. French phrases, loud and scrambled, wafted through to my ears but I tried not to tune in. He asked if I wanted a hot chocolate, and it was hard to refuse. I wasn't that hungry, a nice mug of brown warmth scribbling down my throat didn't seem all that bad.

My dad came in, barely recognizable with soaked glasses, shiny hair and a red face. He was grinning almost and came over to sit down. I had sort of lost him after he went up the lift while me and Zach were lying in the snow. We were just so tired and annoyed that we just decided to stay in the snow. There are actually fewer pleasures than succumbing to that wunnerful fluff known as snow. I remember one time I was sledding with Sam and Slauson, and we crashed sort of while riding in the same sled around mid-hill, and just laid in the snow (not on top of each other of anything) for a few minutes. Eyes closed maybe, water dripping around you, and this cooperative lump enveloping your tired self. Relaxing.

But of course my boots had to be too tight. There was an irksome throbbing around my ankle, and I screamed inside my head, take the boots off need the boots off off offf offffffffff. Eventually I did take them off, or at least loosen the straps. There was lots of snow.

The hot chocolate was pretty good. My dad told us all how he was having serious trouble skiing; he had actually gotten motion sickness from not being able to tell how or what or whatever about moving. Like, if he really was moving or not. So he rambled on about that, and then Zach and Simon came in after awhile. The floor was really slippery from melted crap from boots, but it was warm. Zach got a crescent and Simon took a sip of the wine Steve bought.

After we all heard about my dad's unpleasant experiences several times, we consulted the maps to figure out how the heck we were going to get out of there. Turns out we had to go back up that one lift, on which you had to put a metal like... mini-seat thing between your legs and let it pull you up. Not that bad, except I failed several times on my first try. The French guy had to come over to help.

I really wanted to get out of there, so that determination helped numb some of the pick-axe-cleet-broken glass-carrying gnomes. But, here's the catch that ruined pretty much everything. I fell off the friggin' lift. One second I was doing fine, biting the bullet to stay in there. But then all of a sudden, I move around a little too much or something and just fall right off. You're not high up or anything; in fact, your skies scrape the ground. So it wasn't painful. It was just... incredibly frustrating. Thank goodness my dad was behind me, and he stopped with me. Wind was fiercer now and it was still just white. I hated this.

My dad's attempt at communicating with me was muffled. He had to yell and I could just barely tell what he was saying. We didn't really know how far we were from the top, but walking up with skies is amazingly hard. So we would have to go down. Which I was not enthusiastic at all about. To ski down that... that... utter void of pain and the unknown again was... ugh. But then Steve came down, and my dad explained that I had fallen down the lift. Yup, all my fault, I thought sarcastically. He said it wasn't that far to the top, so walking up seemed the best. I was game.

"Ergh... ugh.. dad- wait a second...!" I was half just talking to myself, not even bothering to try to talk above the prevailing air blowing around. I moved up the angled snow horizontally of course, each step moving maybe a foot or less. But then we decided to just walk up with our boots. It wasn't that far, just pretty unpleasant. Then this French/Swiss dude came up to us (he didn't have any poles so I guessed he was a pretty awesome skier) and my dad comfirmed with him that going up this way and the left was the right way to going back down to where we came from.

Climbing back into my skies proved to be hard again, after thoroughly scraping the "crap" off my boots with Steve's help. Then we had to stop again because there was some little kid bawling his brains out (as my dad had said). He was all alone, maybe 7-11 years old, on the top of that God-foresaken *#%@(%*#&%-ing hill. I didn't blame that kid for crying. But then someone else came and I guess he was ok.

The descent, looking back, wasn't all that bad. But I got kinda worried about my dad. He would fall down once in a while, trying to regain his composure. He was like... seriously having problems. Almost sick to his stomach. His idea was that his body just did not want to ski when it couldn't tell what the hell was happening. Not without reason, Steve had put in with a laugh.

But we obviously made it through. A few snowboarders and some other skiers passed us, but I think I actually did ok on the skiing front. This was my first time in 2 years, and first time on a real mountain. I didn't fall down again, but still had trouble seeing stuff.

"Well, I'm sorry that wasn't that... great," My dad said when he got to the bottom, practically breathless.

"Eh its ok. It'll make for a good blog entry," I said with a grin.

"Yeah that's true I suppose," It's sort of ironic though, because my dad is normally the toughest troop. He's a good skier and all, but all that white blowing around just messed stuff up.

We took the lift down with these other people, 2 teenage boys and what I would guess as their mother. It was weird though, 'cause at first they were talking French, but then I heard the woman say "Stop that," when one of the sons/boys started putting snow down people's backs. They also said some other English stuff, and at one point I looked at my dad and we both grinned.

On the way back, we listened to some of Simon's CD's and stuff, which was pretty cool. We were all super tired, but I myself wasn't that cold. The music was this band Eels, who were actually pretty good. Sort of.. techno... techno jazz in a way.

During one of the breaks of talk in the car, my dad brought up my blog.

After clearing his throat, "Well in a few hours this will all be up in Amelia's blog,"

"Oh is that right? Ha," Steve glanced back at me and I muttered a "Yeah..." with a slight smile.

We stopped by their apartment and had a drink. Rachel, Simon's mom, who's American I think, came by after going snow-shoeing with her brother. Then we broke out some chocolate and talked about the conditions and stuff. My dad was actually shivering, and Zach looked just utterly pissed. He had tons of work to do apparently.

Eventually we left. It was pretty dark. The mountains were now just a blunt white. They had looked just majestic when we first came to drive up, with their snow-laden trees. It looked almost like a huge... a huge wall. Into another perspective maybe. I couldn't believe what I was seeing at first... it was like someone handing you the awesomest book that you had looked for forever and always dreamed of having. But I guess then the amazement becomes reality, and you come to realize what's really happening. Because in a way, its all just nothing out there. But there's those sometimes small, but important sides of stuff that maybe you never notice. They're definitely there, but you might not be sure what they are. But that's up to you to think about. Kinda like the letter i in the word "ominous".