Snowsports: the fountain of youth

March 8, 4:58 PMColorado Mountain Fitness ExaminerLisa Mercer

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If you spend a good deal of time hanging out or working at ski areas, there are two things you might notice:

• You are ageless: You can have conversations with people of any age, because you are united in your love of winter sports.
• You believe that anything is possible, and tend to apply it to ther aspects of your life.

A recent encounter I had on a flight from Raleigh to Denver illustrates this point.

I was seated next to a 16 year old boy. It was March, which is Spring Break season. I wondered if he was visiting any of our Colorado resorts, which had been hurting due to the poor economy. “Are you going riding in Colorado?” I asked. He seemed a bit surprised. Perhaps it was because I used the word “riding” which suggests an insider's knowledge of snowboarder slang. “No, Mammoth,” he answered. It turned out that his mother was a traveling nurse, who lived near Mammoth Ski Resort in California.

Since his mother traveled frequently, he was in boarding school in New Hampshire, where he was part of the local snowboard freestyle team. At this stage of his education, he aspired to become a nurse practitioner. By coincidence, Kara may want to become a traveling nurse, and Kara's mother is a nurse practitioner. Like Kara, he spent a summer vacation traveling in Spain. When I asked him about his college plans, he said that he wanted to go to the American University in Florence. Having done a similar type of program in Perugia, I enthusiastically supported this idea. The boy, who I'll call John, was reading a copy of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which is a favorite of my husband, myself and both my stepkids.

After a few minutes of lively conversation about books, ski resorts in New England and world he turned to me and said, “I have a confession. When I first sat down next to you, I was worried. On my last flight, I sat next to a woman who just droned on about all this boring stuff. But you are really cool and interesting.” The kid had just learned that women of a certain age can be cool and exciting.  I believe that skiers, snowboarders, mountain bikers and hikers of all ages can be cool and exciting. We embrace life's possible solutions with a can-do attitude that is contagious to the people we encounter, no matter how young or how old.