Cross Country

It is Saturday night and I have a moment to breathe, so here I am, with an account of my recent doings:

Two weeks ago I got out of town for a winter weekend in the Catskills with the hiking group I joined a few months ago. It was breathtakingly beautiful, lots of snow, crystal clear air. The inn where we stayed was supposed to resemble a Swiss chalet, and I guess it did, not that I've ever been to one. It also reminded me a little bit of places where my parents used to take me when I was young. My mother was a big fan of fresh air and "the country" and she liked taking walks in the winter, so I was reminded of some happy times with her.

I went alone but met some nice people, particularly my roommate, a woman roughly my age with whom I hit it off right away. There was a choice of activities, different groups going snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, a lone woman who went downhill skiing. I chose to go cross-country skiing with my roommate and one other person and it was a blast. I've been on cross-country skis exactly twice in my life, and I had a few wobbly moments, but mostly I did okay. We went to one place on Saturday, and another place, with more dramatic scenery and a wider variety of trails, on Sunday. Sunday the sun came out, and while the grey sky Saturday was lovely in its own way, the bright sunshine on the snow Sunday, contrasted with the dark green of the pine trees and deep shadows of the woods, was heartstoppingly beautiful. As we wended our way in and out of the trees (Sunday it was just two of us), I kept thinking that I had been dropped into the story of Hansel and Gretel (perhaps the vaguely Swiss/German atmosphere of our hotel contributed to that idea).

I loved the silence, so rare in my life full of subway trains and TV and an office environment which is dominated by the drilling and banging sounds of construction these days. As we glided along the tracks of previous skiiers or sometimes made our own, I heard nothing but my own breath, an occasional twig snapping underneath my skis, and that odd creaking, almost groaning sound that the skis sometimes make, so that I kept being startled and thinking there was someone behind me talking to me.

I had taken the bus up to the Catskills up to join the group, since I don't have a car. It took a long time, but I didn't really mind. There's something romantic about being on a bus at night, passing through the sleeping towns. I had a seat to myself for most of the time, so I could happily doze. And once we got off the highway and started traveling west and into the mountains, I felt more and more like I was leaving my normal life behind. I love the names of those little towns in the mountains: Phoenicia (or as the bus driver said, accenting the first syllable, which he pronounced like "phone," and drawing it out dramatically, "PHOA...... neesha"), Margaretville, Shandaken, and, my destination, Big Indian. What a jumble of different histories in those names. At Big Indian, the driver let me out at my "stop," which was a crossroads with a gas station and a little store, both closed. It was night and cold and snowing and I didn't see a soul. I had told the driver I was being picked up, though, and he said, "Look, I think there's a car over there." "Where?" I said, panicked. He pointed, and I dutifully trudged off in the snow, with my wheeled suitcase behind me, as the bus drove away. Then, to my great relief, I saw the lights of the car as it came toward me. A woman opened the door on the passenger side, and said, "Are you here for the hiking club?" "Yes," I said, and got in, ready for adventure.