I think I was fifteen when I first tried skiing, at Stevens Pass in Washington’s Cascade Range.
I knew nothing about skiing. I rented equipment that day because it was an impromptu thing. I was attending a church youth camp and everyone said, “Let’s go,” so I said okay.
My first shot down the hill was terrifying. I had no idea what was happening. I wondered if I’d live to get to the bottom, or if I would start racing out of control. I fell at least a dozen times on the way down.
Then I discovered this wasn’t even the “bunny hill,” the most gradual slope on the mountains where the three-year-olds take their lessons. I was afraid to get on the chair up the bunny hill, so I was on the hill before the bunny hill, the one with a rope tow.
Good grief.
I spent a few hours on the rope tow hill, then mustered the courage to get on the bunny hill chair. It freaked me out as it churned up the hill, starting with skis on the ground, then quickly taking me up about twenty feet off the snow. I could fall out of this thing and die!
At the top, I try to ski off the chair and immediately fall down. They have to stop the lift line to help me up. I proceed to fall all the way down the hill. Halfway down I caught an edge and plunged over a snowbank, so that my skis were above my feet. I yelled, “Someone help me out of here!”
I spent the day pretty much doing that same thing.
But it was getting easier.
From that day forward I was hooked. I bought equipment. I went up almost every week to places like White Pass, Crystal Mountain, and Snoqualmie Summit.
Eighteen months later I returned to Stevens Pass. By this time I’d been skiing almost thirty times, and had improved a lot. But I still thought of that ominous “bunny hill” as I took the chair lift up.
Wow, it seemed so different now.
I can’t believe I was so worked up with fear at this tiny hill. It was nothing. That day I took on the steepest and most difficult hills at Stevens Pass. They were normal to me. I didn’t have the fear I had last time I came here.
But think about this. The bunny hill never changed. I changed. I became someone different in those eighteen months between the first and second visit.
Think about the hills in your life. The terrifying mountains. The situations that make you afraid. What might happen if you faced up to them? Instead of letting mountains intimidate you forever, why don’t you grow bigger than the mountains?
