That fear of getting hurt, traumatophobia (fear of physical injury) can be a massive head game to conquer. I’ve hurt myself a bunch of times, mostly doing reckless things: swinging from the rafters at a party, roller-skating home from a party, riding my bike home from a party ... but I’d not experienced this particular fear until this year, when the Yorkshireman and I decided to be snow bunnies, hopping from skifield to skifield in Mackenzie and Canterbury regions.
Fox Peak, Porters, Mt Olympus, Cheeseman, Temple Basin, Mt Dobson, Roundhill, Ōhau: there are so many eccentric wee skifields in the middle of the South Island. Literally a bunch of farmers and landowners in the 1970s just went, "I’m going to make a road, there’s snow at the top. We’ll use Jim’s tractor to power the rope tow. And, you know what? Let’s build a lodge so we can have beers after."
I hadn’t been snowboarding for years, but I reckoned it would be just like riding a bike. It wasn’t.
At Roundhill, where I fell off the platter first try, a smug little girl on skis rode over the top of me while asking superciliously, "Why can’t you do it?".
"Don’t be such a mean girl," I shouted up. I could see her, in 10 years’ time, telling beneficiaries that their lives would be better if they just stopped being so lazy.
While our plan to visit as many of these skifields as we could had the goal of adding some much-needed winter fitness to our paused summer routine of a bike ride followed by beer and chips, it similarly did nothing for our waistlines as the Fairlie Bakehouse is equidistant from all, or on the way, or a convenient detour - and that’s three steak and mushroom pies over a weekend. No wonder I struggled to get to my feet once I’d got my bindings done up. I comforted myself with the thought that I was increasing layers of safety padding.
Repetition didn’t increase confidence or proficiency, in fact I think we were actually getting worse the more days we had on the snow because our minds were shouting, "Slow down! You’ll crash!" the minute we picked up speed. What’s with that warning bell in the back of your mind that stops you challenging yourself? People shatter a femur tripping over a garden hose, for Pete’s sake!
The Yorkshireman’s had a puck to the face that broke his maxillary and made his eye pop out of its socket and dangle on his cheek; his kneecap was dislocated, speared from behind by a goalie. He’s no babyman, unless you try to take away his Milwaukee power tools. But here we were, 4000ft above worry level, scared we’d hurt ourselves. I don’t care that this fear comes from our primitive brain, a part the size of an almond called the amygdala, the same brain our prehistoric ancestors walked around with a quarter of a million years ago that told them not to pet a saber-toothed tiger. It can Cro-Magnon right off.
When you’re young you have less wisdom but more gung ho. When you get older you have plenty of wisdom but less gung ho - it’s like wisdom and gung ho are on a sliding scale and it isn’t possible have both in equal amounts. Plus, there’s also the added factor of stimulants to take into consideration. Partaking of adventure sports while not straight can make some folks better at them. Not me. As an old boyfriend once said, "Giving Lisa drugs is a waste of two people’s high".
Although, I’ll admit, drugs were a factor this season. Performance enhancing? Not quite. In the hopes of mitigating my terror of Mt Dobson’s 15km of winding, icy, sheer vertical drop on one side gravel road, I took a Valium. Dobson was closed due to wind that day, so I fell asleep in the car like an absolute hero.
