muscle memory

Today I went cross-country skiing alone. I was not far from my home--just up the street at a church that adjoins some soccer and baseball fields. A little woods bisects the area.

For me, cross country skiing is nothing like playing tennis. I learned to play tennis when I was seven or eight--and I played until I was 16. Then I picked it up again at age 36, and have been at it 2-3 times a week for 15 years.

My body learned tennis from those seemingly endless hours on the country club courts. The lessons were reinforced by watching some of the greatest tennis players of the 1970s, all of whom came to play at out club every summer, including Billie Jean King, Evonne Goolagong, Margaret Court, Chris Evert, Linda Tuero (OK--Linda was just excellent on clay, but whatever), Arthur Ashe, Ilie Nastase, Stan Smith, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg.

So when the time came to take the game back up, it wasn't all that hard for me to figure out what to do. In fact, it was not hard at all. I wasn't great at 16 and I am certainly not now, but despite a 20-year layoff, my body knew the motions. Every shot had made an imprint on my mind in the 1960s and 1970s, and if I could just exert precise muscle control (the problem), I could make the shot.

Not so with XC skiing. Vaunted as one the very best forms of exercise, I just happen to love feeling nice-and-warm in the midst of the snow and wind. But I have no idea how to do it. The sport uses muscles I did not know I had. I try to grip phantasmal things with things inside my insides--just to stay upright. No balance, wobbly wobbly, all fall down. Sitzmark. But I ski along because it is bright and beautiful and quiet and chances are--for just a moment--you are the ONLY one who sees what you see.

The most beautiful thing I saw today was a simple streak in the snow--a track that started in the middle of nothing and ended just beyond. No tracks in or out. Just a relatively broad point of impact, and a narrow streak leading up into nothing. Oh....and a small explosion of downy feathers littered a cross the undisturbed snow just before the mark begins. Some raptor swooped in and picked up...what..a mouse? Another bird?

It was weird--like a drawing of a death.