Night Skiing

And life with young teenagers

In early January, between bouts of illness, the snow had fallen and beckoned us to the mountain—Casper Mountain—to ski. We headed up in the late morning, Jon and I and five kids. Because of the limited parking by the regular Nordic trails due to a construction job, we went further up to the biathlon course. Wonder of wonder, no one was there! It was bright and sparkling and lovely. Of course, we got all the skis on and into the course before we realized it hadn’t been freshly groomed. And if you know anything about ungroomed cross-country trails, it’s that if you’re wearing skate skis—and most of us were—it’s sort of like wishfully trying to walk across a bog and hoping your feet don’t get submerged. So we skied for about ten minutes and then the kids ditched the skis to play in the snow.

It wasn’t a total loss. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that plans change, and it doesn’t pay to get upset. So you embrace what you get. The kids had some fun, we got outside, the four-year-old learned that it’s not a great idea to take off both boots attached to skis and socks while lying on his stomach in the snow, I got to practice patience again. It was family time, and it was good.

Meanwhile, I did really want to ski for a decent chunk of time. So when our oldest daughter, now a teenager, asked me that afternoon back at home if I wanted to take her night skiing that same night, I jumped at the chance.

We drove up the mountain in the pitch black, the sunset long over, though it was only about 7:00. Normally, early winter darkness makes me at least a little sad, but this time, C and I felt was great: it meant we’d get to ski the lighted loop before the hour got too late.

We parked at the entrance to Skunk Hollow, near the top of Strube Loop and also the start of a long climb up Beartrap. The formerly packed lot was empty except for one car besides ours. We climbed out into the cold, appreciating that the air was brisk but not freezing, the way it sometimes is in January. It also wasn’t windy, which we also liked. We carried our gear past the gate that blocks traffic. I had a headlamp on, the skittering light helping us a little (I’d foolishly forgotten to check both headlamps I’d brought; the one C tried had dead batteries. She kindly deferred to me to wear the working one). Peering into the darkness beyond the streetlight and the faint point of the headlamp, into the descent to other trails, was eerie. It seemed almost tangible, the black. C and I agreed that it was a relief to look up the hill to the lighted loop.

Unsurprisingly, C was faster than me at getting on her skis and poles.¹ After I stepped into my skis and used my teeth to pull the Velcro tight on my ski pole straps, I looked up to see C methodically climbing the hill. Stride, stride. Left, right. I pulled off my straps and took a few fast pictures, hoping I could catch her form with the camera before she was out of sight.

C stopped at the top of the hill and called after me. “Are you coming?” I was, and I finally caught up. We paused, both of us breathing hard, and then proceeded to head around the loop, stopping here and there. Once, C wanted to head into the Stadium, so called because that’s where ski races for school and other teams start and finish, and where there are a few bleachers, usually deeply blanketed with snow. The lights weren’t on there, so we laid down on our backs and looked up at the stars. They were pulsingly bright, three-dimensional against the cosmos. I started to say something about how magnificent the stars are, how awesomely God made our universe. C murmured agreement and then made a joke, I can’t remember what. We both laughed. Then we got up and skied some more.

Life with young teenagers is something like night skiing.² For us, after skiing for some seven or so years now, heading out onto the snow where light and visibility is limited can be fun. It’s a little adventure. It’s familiar but not. You sort of know what’s happening out of habit, but everything looks different, so in a way, it is different. No moment is an exact replica of what came before.

Years ago, when I had two or three kids and was still drowning in early motherhood, I found and loved a blog written by three Lutheran women about ten years ahead of me in their motherhood experiences. They had five, six, seven, I don’t know how many kids, because each mom was also open to more kids and over the next few years, they each got pregnant, more than once, if I remember right. They’d done motherhood long enough that their wisdom was insightful and extremely encouraging to me, their wit—sometimes sarcastic and caustic, other times jovial and teasing—was exactly what I needed.³

But after a few years, their blogging flagged, as did the writing of some other women I followed whose kids were getting older. I sort of understood, but I also didn’t. Their older kids could dress themselves, take themselves to the bathroom, even help make meals. These moms had so much more time now! Why couldn’t they write more?

Slow and somewhat dumb learner that I am, I’m now seeing what happens to mothers of many who have both teenagers and toddlers. They—we—are stretched on both ends, feeding and waking and changing and wrangling, and also reading and pointing and disciplining and directing the kids in the middle, and trying to stay awake long enough to be around the teenagers who—wonder of wonders—want to hang out and get chummy. At night. When it’s dark. When the rest of world is getting ready to (or in my case, praying for the blessed gift of) sleep.

Our teenagers are typical, I think, in their desire for nocturnal sharing. We’ll have family prayers and reading, the younger kids will brush their teeth and get tucked in, lights will be turned off. I’ll retreat to the master bedroom to start my own wind down, and a tall young man will stroll into the room, casually sit on the bed. Or a young lady will appear in the doorway and say, “Can we talk?” Or a deep voice will knock on my bathroom door and, with a feint at nonchalance, say he just wanted to say goodnight.⁴

I remember worrying, in our first house with a basement laundry room, how I was going to wash and sort down there while the squirming and independent baby was upstairs. Or did moms forcibly take their kids with them everywhere they went? Just the other day I was pulling warm school shirts out of the dryer and hanging them on the rack, and I heard the rhythmic slap-slap-slap of the crawling one-year-old’s hands against the floor above me. Then I heard the four-year-old talking to him, chirpy and kind. I smiled. I learned a long time ago to turn up the radar when I’m not in the same room as my young children, to listen to their sounds and voices, to forestall disaster (if possible), to cherish the quotidian soundtracks of crawling bodies and babblings and to ignore unimportant squabbles. Basically, I’ve learned not to freak out over every word and noise that I hear going on without me, but also to pay attention.

And the paying attention hasn’t changed. The hovering son or small-sighing daughter, physically growing fast and powerfully, awkwardly, unfamiliarly to themselves, have something to say. Maybe it’s deep and insightful, probably it isn’t. Maybe they need to talk through their day, or an interaction, or a homework frustration. Maybe they are trying to process a friendship, or feelings, or goals or dreams or existential wonderings. Maybe they just want to share some jokes. We’ve covered all of these examples and more.

But the main point is the conversation. The moment is important. Our teenagers need to know that we are game for a little adventure, another experience that is both familiar and new. They need to know that we will head into the darkness with them, encounter the shadows and the exhilarating slopes together. Even when—especially when—we’re tired. Or we want to do something else, like finish a project or read or, you know, blog or write.⁵

And we usually don’t know exactly how the conversation will go. Some sort of formulaic script doesn’t fit in these interactions. Intuition does. Embracing an ebb and flow, shifting with momentum, does. I’m learning that our teenagers need to know, in short, that we will go with them now the way our daughter wanted me to go night skiing with her. When it’s a little uncomfortable, when it’s dark, when regular trails are transformed.

As C and I finished another loop, three people approached, skiing, from the opposite direction. At first I thought they were taller parents with a younger child. Then I heard a woman’s voice. “Way to go, Mom! Ski with your kids!” I laughed and raised my arm in agreement as they passed. That’s when I saw that the other tall figure with the mom was a young man, a teenager. Another mom out spending time with her growing and changing people.

We do indeed need to keep going, and ski, when possible, into the unknown with our teenagers. What a gift. What an adventure.

Want to read some more about the blessings of skiing? Try this post, too.

1. Skate ski poles have a more involved hand and wrist strap than the standard loop that you can slip over your gloves or mittens. So that’s a bit of a project, too.

2. Our young teens are 13, 14, and 16.

3. For the curious, the blog was The Concordian Sisters of Perpetual Parturition. It’s defunct now, but boy, do I still really appreciate the words of Rebekah, Dawn, and Reb. Mary.

4. My husband is definitely the night owl in our relationship. I am the talker. You can see why the kids tend to come my way, though when they want to bond over sports and usually politics, or the boys need a man, they head Jon’s way.

5. Obviously I still make time for this. But my time is more geared to the spectrum of needs in my household than to Substack. In case you wondered.