Skiing in the sleet, in a cutting wind, out a causeway across drought-shrunken, stump-filled Lake Keechelus near Snoqualmie Pass in the central Cascades. I'd have been within sight of Interstate 90 if the visibility hadn't shrunk to ten feet. Miserable weather. Absolutely no redeeming social value to the scenery. I thought,"I am enjoying this. Why?"

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It's easy to see why I might enjoy cross-country skiing on a wintry afternoon when I'm skiing through the forest, with huge flakes drifting down fast and thick and silent, unpropelled by the wind, so they muffle even the slick-slick of my skis, and then, when I come out of the woods, the clouds blow off, the sun comes out, the mountains appear, and I have entered another universe. Or on a sunny spring day in an alpine valley, when I strip off layer after layer, hang my heavy clothing from a branch, and take off down a side trail to investigate a snow bridge. Or when I'm not skiing at all—I stop to eat half a sandwich and take a drink of icy water, and I see a magisterial black bird, which lands at the top of a Douglas fir and calls out over the land in a huge voice like rusted metal, and I realize that, although I've seen ravens before, I have never until now understood why they are sacred.

But these things, however enjoyable, are not the essence of skiing. For me, the soul-nourishing heart of cross-country skiing is the rhythm that I use to move comfortably uphill or quickly across miles of meadow—the swing of pole, the shift of weight, the slap and kick and glide. This is why I was having a great time in driving sleet near the Interstate, and why, at midnight in a blizzardy Seattle, I have put on my skis to go out for an hour, skiing down the middle of unplowed streets lit by sodium-vapor lamps. It's ever so much nicer on a sunny day in Tuolomne Meadows—but that rhythm is the essence, and I'll take it wherever I can get it.

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