The Pittsburgh Press (February 5, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
TIMBERLINE LODGE, Ore. – The second day of skiing is what takes willpower for a man whose muscles are as soft as mine.
When I woke this morning, I tried to think where I might have been yesterday. My first impression was that I had been lynched. I felt exactly as if I had been beaten to death with sticks, stones and blunt instruments.
If I’d had sense, I would simply have built a big fire in the fireplace in my room, put on house-slippers, and settled my sobbing tendons deep into a couple of pillows for a good forenoon’s groaning.
But no! I’ve taken this stuff to heart about France going soft, and England becoming decadent, and Americans getting so mechanically dependent that a fellow can’t tie his own shoe.
So I have to gird up my reluctant sinews and charge out there to the hillside again and plug around on those damn clapboards, just to help restore the old tradition that America is peopled by stalwart and hardy men.
This second day, I had decided, I wouldn’t go to the instruction class, but would seek out some hidden glade behind the fir trees, and practice in solitude what the instructor had tried to teach me the day before.
However, I never did get to my private glade. That was due largely to timidity. For, when I got out among the trees, I found I was afraid to strike out on any new trails, and I finally just followed the one I already knew.
Naturally that brought me right back to the same slope we were on yesterday, and there were Olaf and the two girls again.
Highlights of day’s skiing
There’s no use going into detail about the day’s skiing. It was more or less a bad imitation of yesterday’s awkwardness. The highlights can be told briefly, as follows:
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I got my ski-pole caught in the snow, ran my left leg into it, took off about three square inches of skin, and soon the blood was soaking through my pants.
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To avoid running into a woman, I sat down real quick and twisted my left ankle so badly it made me feel sick and I had to sit there awhile.
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Another time, and for no purpose I’ve been able to figure out, I suddenly sat down with great force and determination right on the back end of my ski. A ski is not soft like snow. The exact point of my anatomy which came into contact with the ski is not usually mentioned in polite society. But, whatever you wish to call it, it was destroyed all to pieces, as the Japs say. I’m sure it’s much worse than Mr. Henderson’s leg. He can at least limp.
Outside of that, nothing happened. Not even any noticeably adequate “stem-turns.” Olaf paid me no compliments today. It was almost dark when I got back to the Lodge. When I leaned over to unlace my boots, it felt like somebody had kicked me behind. But nobody had.
Despite these temporary setbacks, I am learning a great deal about skiing. Not learning how to do anything, of course, but learning a lot of little facts you could put in an encyclopedia, For instance:
Falling down is nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody falls down.
Falling in the snow is usually soft. You don’t get as many bruises as when you fall on ice, but you get more twists and sprains if your skis are crossed and your legs get mixed up.
Skis are awkwardest things
Skis are the awkwardest things. Mine are 6½ feet long, and I’m convinced five feet of them are superfluous and an impediment to the usual fine grace of my movements.
Friends had assured me that, after three days, I would be skiing moderately well down gentle slopes from 100 to 200 yards. These friends over-estimated me. So far I can’t ski more than 50 feet down a slope, and then I always tumble at the bottom.
The main trouble with trying to learn to ski when you’ve reached my palsied status in life is that you just can’t relax and throw yourself around. I’m as rigid as a bar of steel when I start down a slope. The way to ski is to float like a flag in the wind.
What balls me up worst is that in skiing you must balance yourself just the reverse of what instinct tells you. You must lean toward the outside of a turn, instead of toward the inside, as on skates or a bicycle.
I’ve been trying to tell Olaf this is all wrong, but he’s stubborn, and I can’t seem to teach him anything.