My Sinisterhand

This past weekend, Maria and I took a trip up to Boone, NC. The snow there is amazing this year! We left our house around 8 a.m. Saturday morning and headed west. Boone is about 4 hours away nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina near the Virginia and Tennessee borders. The snow storm covered almost all of North Carolina and was even felt in Wilmington on the coast. The roads were quite icy and we had to travel at a slow pace for about the first half of the trip until we reached Greensboro. We finally arrived at Boone about 12:30 p.m. and headed for Appalachian Ski Mountain Resort. I was due to meet a friend there to ski the rest of the day. Maria took a quick picture of me after I changed in the parking lot and then she left me there for the day. Skiing is not her cup of tea, so she had other things in mind like spas, massages and pedicures.

Appalachian is a very small ski resort compared to the resorts out west in the Rockies, but the snow was just as good. It was dry packed powder and perfect for me to get warmed up. I stayed and skied until about 4:30 p.m. and then my friend, Rich, and I left. He dropped me off at the hotel. We had dinner at a small Italian restaurant and then I passed out in the hotel.

The next morning Rich and I decided to go to Ski Beech which is the highest ski resort on the east coast. The snow was even better there. The slopes were nicer too. However, snowboarders were ten times as numerous and this always has made me nervous. I guess the generalization is that snowboarders hog the slopes. I can understand this perception. It makes me a little nervous and I am always on my guard when to trails joined each other. Last winter in when I was in Utah on a ski trip, a friend of mine was blindsided by a snowboard as he was on the precipice of a black diamond trail. He was pushed up and over the edge and slide about 50 feet down the slope. One of his skis was cut and gouged where the snowboard collided with his. After having experienced this first hand, I made a mental note to always be cautious around snowboarders.

We finished skiing about 4 p.m. on Sunday and left for the hotel. Unbeknown to me, Maria was very sick all day long. We are not sure what it was but it came and went over about a 48 hour period. She could not eat or drink all day Sunday until late that evening. The next we left Boone for home around 8 a.m. after having a small breakfast in a diner near our hotel. The snow started coming down rather quickly that morning and it was getting worse. We made our way down from the mountains and past the Blue Ridge Parkway in a haze of snow. We made it home safely from a great weekend in the mountains. I am looking forward to next year’s snow. I hope it is a bad (good) as this year’s. I know I have not finished my Cape Fear adventure story, and I will. I have had a lag in my writing lately. I will get to it though, so do not worry. It is coming.

-Jason

Often times I find myself in a situation that leaves me with a mark of remembrance. Whether it is at a point of struggle or an instance of pain, I recount the experience over and over again as I examine the mark. I inspect closely the disfigured and misshapen form that once was and I remember. Sometimes they are too painful to look upon at first, with floods of emotion and memories that I cannot control. Other times they stand as standards of victories and accomplishments that I recall warmly. Regardless, they are a part of me. I count my scars and understand that it is through pain that we are brought here and it will be through pain we leave. Yet, I believe it will not be an eternal pain. The departing pain is the price that must be paid. It will be collected. There is no other recompense. Yet, it is through these scars that I find my struggle and journey most rewarding when the sun sets and I fall into that cousin of death. I awake the next day with just a little less tenderness, but always the memory and learning still.

From the canyons of the mind,
We wander on and stumble blindly
Through the often-tangled maze
Of starless nights and sunless days,
While asking for some kind of clue
Or road to lead us to the truth,
But who will answer?

Side by side two people stand,
Together vowing, hand-in-hand
That love’s imbedded in their hearts,
But soon an empty feeling starts
To overwhelm their hollow lives,
And when they seek the hows and whys,
Who will answer?

On a strange and distant hill,
A young man’s lying very still.
His arms will never hold his child,
Because a bullet running wild
Has struck him down. And now we cry,
“Dear God, Oh, why, oh, why?”
But who will answer?

High upon a lonely ledge,
a figure teeters near the edge,
And jeering crowds collect below
To egg him on with, “Go, man, go!”
But who will ask what led him
To his private day of doom,
And who will answer?

If the soul is darkened
By a fear it cannot name,
If the mind is baffled
When the rules don’t fit the game,
Who will answer? Who will answer? Who will answer?

-Ed Ames