EDITO
It’s leaking water from all sides*
*but we’re skiing on it anyway
When I imagine having a child, just like my father did with me, I imagine him or her at the age of two, in the same sloping lawn, under the same beech trees, taking his/her first steps on skis. I haven’t seen any snow on that grass for years.
It was my grandfather first, who built there, in order to teach my father to ski, a surface lift just forty or fifty meters long. Few, but sufficient for the purpose. Which then was to learn while having fun. Today that surface lift is no longer there and when I happen to walk there I feel the passage of a generation, the passage of time and the power of something that I will not be lucky enough to pass on to Guglielmo, or Bianca. (Yes, my children will be named like that.)
Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have had the unhealthy idea of going to the attic, recovering a couple of old sealskins and cutting them to size for children. In my case, however, I would not have much waste material. The idea is good, though. The problem remains with the bindings, the boots that fit the pins, and the parents. In short, I should find a guinea pig aged a couple of years, maximum three, with a consenting mother. And I ran out of cousins. (In the sense that they are all grown up and they have followed in the footsteps of the family, those of alpine skiing.)
A propaedeutic aimed at this new trend will be born, I’m sure. Which then to me, more than a “trend”, seems like a real premonition. A vision of our future on the snow. Yesterday I read an article that ruined my hot shower. First of all because I felt guilty and I further shortened my time spent in the shower, which already did not exceed 120/180 seconds due to the water crisis, and secondly because I have read that already from 2036, according to the estimates, in Cortina it will no longer be possible to ski. The cause? Snow too wet.
The ever higher temperatures, combined with the lack of energy, will result in the end of the winter seasons in the Dolomites, at least as we know them nowadays. And not only there. While I soap myself in the cold, with the water not running and the water heater turned off, I imagine a tide of ski mountaineers, with new super waxes, capable of sliding any insole, on any type of snow. Because I don’t know how to accept a world without skis. And I deeply believe in the adaptability of the human being. I see skiers abandoning the habits of the classic technique, slapping themselves backwards for the entire arc of the curve, placing the weight of the body on the calves, against the cuffs. Rear center of gravity in order to improve buoyancy and surf the waters like epic heroes or ancient gods.
My grandfather, however, is 87 years old. My father is 58. The water in the shower is still not running and the cold, to me who sucks at math, makes calculations even more difficult. But it seems to me that my grandfather, in 2036, would be 101 years old, while dad 72. Now, as much as I know the whole business of increasing life expectancy, I am also a realist and I see in my grandfather, to whom I owe more than what he would believe, so much suffering, already today. It’s strange, but I feel a sweet and bitter relief thinking about the idea that he wouldn’t witness a vision of a snowless mountain. That its whitened beeches will remain a memory for him. And I’m happy with it.
A mountain that weeps, which leaks from all sides, is what we are up to. But I’m saying it again, “skiing” will change, and us with it. It is a tale as old as time. It is, quite simply, the history of men. My father learned to ski with long wooden planks without sidecuts, throwing his hips from side to side, shaking like a Victoria’s Secret model on the catwalk. (And he was already skiing hard.) When the first carving skis came out around the second half of the 90s, with decidedly more important sidecuts, he spent entire weekends at the ski lift of the ski school, alone, with his hands on his knees in order to learn to lead, “to bend” as he says. In short, maybe he will have to struggle a little more, but I can see him even at 72, ready to face wet slopes. At worst, should it prove difficult, Bianca and Guglielmo will help him.
I open the water and wait for the heat to take the soap away from me. I observe the drops pouring on my body and I see the slopes of Cortina, Innsbruck, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, St. Moritz and Monte Rosa. With one finger I draw hypothetical lines on my body, up and down between my shapes, and I can see, among all that water, a New Era of skiers. And I see all the adaptability of human beings. All the strength to go on. All time.
(As soon as I finish to shower, however, I would go to the attic to cut the skins.)
