Lean into your lineage a little if you can, no matter how long it is
Changing everything at once can be a bit much
We drove up a logging road to go skiing on Sunday, passing a half dozen hunters and their trucks parked along the way, almost sliding our Tesla off the road once. As we passed a father and young son with their rifles over their shoulders, I felt guilty that I wasn’t trying to put food on the table for my family, hunting with my dad or son. And a little silly sliding around in a Tesla. Instead we’d gone to my parents’ house and my dad dug three pairs of skis out of the shed for us, including a pair with leather bindings that could be strapped onto Levi’s little XTRATUF boots. I found a pair of three-pin boots in my childhood closet for Mariah. My dad had a pair of tele skis that would work with some burly leather Merrell’s that his friend had given me a few months back. We didn’t know if the skiing would be any good, but we had to try.
The next day, Mariah returned from a restorative justice conference in Juneau called Kaa Tukaxsake Heende, or Towards the River That Untangles a Person’s Mind. It’s a phrase that comes from the Salmon Boy story, about going home. It’s a phrase that relaxes my chest. Just reading it seems to untangle my mind a little. Mariah actually meant to attend a different conference aimed at educators but was glad to learn about restorative justice in a bigger sense, for entire cultures instead of individual kids. She’s not indigenous, but wants to be more aware of that part of local culture in her new role as a middle-high school counselor. At the conference, she talked about missing fishing for the past few years after having kids. Another woman cried because she’s never had the chance to go fishing, and felt like she was missing out on that part of her heritage. On the final day, the group was split into white and non-white. In the white group, Mariah was challenged to lean into her own ancestry. Then it was her turn to cry, as she realized she’d left seven generations of Coloradoans, and her great-grandfather is in the Colorado ski hall of fame. Mariah has missed skiing since having kids too, only getting out a tiny fraction of what she had growing up. She felt deeply depressed thinking about her life in those terms, about everything she’s given up and been forced to leave behind.
And I realized I missed skiing too, it having been a big part of my growing up here in Petersburg. I don’t know much about my ancestors’ traditions past my own upbringing, but all the hills around town are filled with stories for me, along with some of the mainland mountains across the water. Where I didn’t make stories, I made dreams.
I felt motivated to go skiing, for Mariah and for me. And for our kids and dog.
We parked the car at around 9 thanks to daylight savings time. I feel good about getting anywhere with kids in the single-digit hours of the morning. Sun had just hit the valley. Surface hoar facets an inch high sparkled like a sugar-coated fairyland. The muskeg was frozen firm underneath, only showing wet in our tracks in a couple spots, and the muskeg holes were iced over, but I didn’t trust them to walk on. The snow around them was six inches deep, enough to glide smooth and fast and quiet. After getting strapped into his skis, Levi didn’t hesitate to point them downhill and fall on his butt a few times. On the flats he marched around like he hadn’t ever stepped off his skis since last winter. We did laps nearby while Tephra slept in the car, leaving the hatchback open so we’d hear her if she woke. Then we woke her up and Mariah strapped her on her back and I strapped Levi on mine, and we skied up the road, where no one had been able to drive for days. Mariah pointed out porcupine tracks, with their little coarse-haired comet trails. We skied in the opposite rut to not cover them. Our dog Randy caught up to the porcupine and we screamed at him and he just sniffed its butt and it didn’t swing its tail. We went a mile up the road, and Mariah said, “I don’t have anything to prove.” I was fine with that, drenched in sweat and shoulders burning with Levi in my backpack. My parents weighed him the other day and said he’s 45 pounds. We turned around and coasted a bit on the way down, which Levi liked. And we got back to the car and sledded a little with Tephra and drank some hot cocoa, and we drove down the road and didn’t slide off it and made it home for lunch.
And Mariah said she felt fulfilled, and so did I. Who knows what other traditions we are oblivious to, but are in our blood. I have a feeling skiing goes back farther than a couple generations for me, and it’s probably unwise to give it up for purely practical pastimes. I’m grateful that I grew up with skiing, and still have the means to pursue it. So many people have a better understanding of their ancestry, but painfully so, because they’ve been pushed away from it more forcefully than me.