The Phoenix: Epicuriousmothering Rising

  After reading my last post, my friend  a podcast  about sliding on ice (and falling through).  In this podcast, a Denali Mountain climbing guide tells about bringing a sick client across an ice bridge with thousands of feet deep crevasses.  At once point, the ice bridge breaks and his client falls in.  By some miracle, he catches both of them and secures them.  He finds his client dangling fifty feet down in the ice cold, dark whole.  (I'm going to very badly paraphrase what happens next). The guide yells down to his sick client, You must cut away your sled and back pack so the rope won't break.   The client looks up and says, But there are thousands of dollars worth of equipment and all my things. I don't want to let them go. The guide says, It is your life.   It's too heavy.  It will drag you down. Cut them away so you can have a chance at survival.  You can replace them, you can't replace your life.   He lists and cuts the sled and his pack off and they listen

  I love to sled.   We hike for miles up the snow covered hills, up steep slopes and through forests to get the perfect fifteen or twenty minute ride.   Sometimes it is smooth and sweet and gentle, sometimes, after lots of people have packed down the path, it is fast and thrilling and slightly terrifying.  But every time I sled, I always fall off.  After snowstorms, falling off is a puff of snow and a cold face and ice melt running down your neck, but more often, it is a slid into a rock or tree or a flip off your sled onto ice.  You get bruises and sometimes, like Finn last year, you break things (second arm break).  We laugh and say that we need to wear helmets, but I’m actually thinking I’ll wear one next time. This year, there isn’t much snow.  We have to go up to Pine Hallow and fight with mountain bikers and hikers on the narrow, barely there trail with cliffs on one side.  On that trail, there is no possibility of a soft landing.  It is nerve wracking and yet I still go (though