Have y’all been watching the winter Olympics? Maybe it’s just me, but it’s seemed even more thrilling and entertaining and awe-inspiring than usual. The women’s speed-skating, women’s and men’s figure skating, the hockey, all those flipping and twirling skiers and snowboarders, the fast-fast-fast downhillers– just wow. And of course the suspenseful curling.
But the ski mountaineering just blew my mind. Skimo is absolutely my worst nightmare of an athletic event. It requires the participants (who must have been willing at some point, though I don’t understand why) to ski uphill, taking off their skis to walk/trot up an inexplicable staircase, put said skis back on, trudge/trot to the top, take the skis skins off (making sure to put them safely in a pouch), and then ski downhill on light-and-skinny skis in an act that one commentator said was like “skiing a steep downhill on two pieces of dried pasta”.
That sounds terrible.
But then, I thought, maybe that’s what makes this sport so appealing– it’s the most tiring, challenging sport they could think of.
But, could we help them out and offer suggestions to make it even harder? I think we can. Here are some ideas I came up with.
1) Like the cross country ski race entrant Nazgul, the Czechoslovakian wolf dog (not to be confused with Heated Rivalry’s stupid Canadian wolf bird), they should allow dogs on the trail. Petting will be permitted, but competitors may not commandeer dog treats for themselves during the race.
2) For the relay races, participants should have to stand in line to buy another lift ticket. They need to make sure they have their credit cards ready, as the Olympic vendors won’t take cash.
3) Like the Tour de France, they could have photographers and team coaches on Sno-Cats, rumbling up and down the hills in between the competitors. Having them shout “go faster!” would be optional.
4)Allow spectators all along the course, screaming, partying, encouraging them with cowbells, and offering them beer hand ups during the stairs part of the race. Non-alcoholic of course, as this IS he Olympics. Honestly, I’m not sure if this will make their job easier or harder. The only way to know for sure is to try it.
5) Require that each competitor take at least 4 selfie photos and post them on social media during the race. So much of what happens doesn’t “officially count” unless it’s been posted, so why not include race results in that category? 🙂 Extra points for selfies with a spectator, and double extra points for a selfie with a dog on the course.
So, readers– any other ideas to make this sport even more chaotic and difficult? I welcome your suggestions.
“Nordic combined is a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and ski jumping. The competition begins with a jump from a hill – rather them than me – before doing a 10km cross-country race later that same day. Whoever wins the first jump competition starts the race with a time of 00:00:00, whereas all other athletes start with a time disadvantage based on their scores in the first jump.Then, like how most races work, the first to cross the line wins.”
Why no women? Some say not enough audience, others say not enough countries could take part, or not enough women are ready for the event… there are many different reasons given, but it seems to me the principle of equal access in sports ought to trump those reasons. If both men and women can’t compete, then we ought not to include the sport in the Olympics.
“In 2022, I was somewhere over the Atlantic, flying home from a training camp in Slovenia and watching a live broadcast as the president of the International Olympic Committee announced decisions for the 2026 Games. I kept refreshing the livestream as it buffered and froze (the overpriced Wi-Fi was pretty wonky), waiting for him to reveal the plans for Nordic combined. I was barely blinking, barely breathing. Minutes felt like hours. I kept checking, thinking maybe I’d missed something. But the truth is it would not have mattered if I had missed his announcement. Of course, I didn’t miss it. Even worse, l knew what the IOC president would say even before he completed the sentence: Women wouldn’t be included in Nordic combined racing in the 2026 Winter Games.”
“Sports federations, advocacy groups and athletes all say Nordic combined, while niche, has grown in recent years — especially at the youth level — and are lobbying for the IOC to include it in 2030.
The IOC says it will conduct a full evaluation after the 2026 Olympics in order to make a “decision on the inclusion of Nordic Combined for men and women” in 2030 — meaning it’s possible Nordic combined could be removed from the roster altogether. It is expected to make a decision at its annual meeting in June.”
This year we’re celebrating it, the sunny snowy days anyway. For three weekends in a row, we played in the snow between work things.
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks away in Ottawa at academic administrators’ conferences. Week 1 was the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education (CCAE) Development for Deans meeting. Week 2 was Higher Education Strategy Associate’s Re:University meeting. It’s been a very busy January and so this blog post is more photo essay than anything.
An ode to playing in the snow!
Weekend one was Sarah, Mallory, and me at Arrowhead and Limberlost on skis, skates, and snowshoes. It was snowy and warm, like almost too warm, just below freezing.
Weekend two Sarah and I spent at the farm between Ottawa conferences. Mallory and friends visited and so did Susan and Jeff. It was a bit strange weather-wise. In this part of Canada, we associate snow with lake effect snow, and that usually happens when it’s not that cold. When it gets really cold, people say it’s too cold to snow. Not this winter. As our weather changes, with climate change, we’re having overlap between days when there are record-breaking cold temperatures and record-breaking amounts of snow. What’s that mean? Toronto had -25 (feels like -35) and 60 cm of snow in 24 hours. Ouch!
I wrote recently about why the snow makes me smile and I smiled a lot this weekend. So much snow. So much smiling.
Sarah and I missed winter last year while we spent my research leave in New Zealand. I loved our time there but I did miss the snow.
❄️ Who came along: Sarah, Mallory, and me
❄️ Where we stayed: Tally Ho Cottages outside Huntsville
❄️ Where we played: Arrowhead Provincial Park and Limberlost Forest and Wildlife Reservation
Walk
Mallory and I started the day off with a walk around the cottages while Sarah finished off some work stuff. That was our warm up for our weekend of outdoor activity.
Mallory and me walking around the cottages
Ski
After breakfast the three of us headed over to Arrowhead Provincial Park. We have a provincial park season pass so it was free but we still had to book for day use, since the park limits the number of people who can visit. I’d read about weekend crowds and it’s true the parking lot and lodge were busy but the trails weren’t crowded at all.
I was very nervous. Old me, before my knees went bad, loved cross country skiing. I was frightened I wouldn’t be able to do it. But do you know what? It was fine. Except we accidentally took the long trail, 5 km, instead of 3 km. They were my favorite kind of ski trails, mostly flat and winding through the trees. It was warm, -1, and snowing pretty heavily at times. It all felt kind of magical.
What we’ll do differently next time– bring snacks on the trail, bring water, and wear less clothes, or least different clothes, technical clothes you can sweat in. I remember all this from my old cross country skiing days. It’s been awhile.
The best news? I remembered how to cross country ski! My new knees did a great job. I’m looking forward to more cross country skiing in the future.
Skate
Arrowhead also hosts Fire and Ice nights where they light their 1.3 km skating trail for evening skating. I was excited to go– even got my skates sharpened for the occasion. And Sarah taped up the skate tongue that the shed mice had chewed off. I can’t believe they made a nest in my skates.
After dinner we headed back into the park for skating. Mallory and Sarah did great but I haven’t skated since before knee surgery. It turns out skating isn’t like bike riding, or even cross country skiing. Maybe you do forget how to do it. I didn’t manage much actual skating, though I did move around on the ice for a little bit. Advanced wobbling.
Now the ice was pretty rough and it was very crowded so maybe that was part of it. I’m not ready to give up and declare skating a thing I just don’t do anymore. Sarah and I have decided to keep at it and try skating again. Wish me luck.
Here’s me in my helmet just in case I took a tumble on the ice.
We ended the day with cards, Wizard as usual. Mallory and I tied.
Our fitness trackers, Mallory’s fitbit and my Garmin, started letting us know we’d done a bit too much. Mallory’s wasn’t happy even with the first bit of skiing since she’d already been skating that week and playing volleyball with her queer volleyball league.
Probably we should have stretched, but we did not. Instead we all crashed and slept really well. Zzzzz.
Snowshoe
Sunday morning Mallory had to head back to London to sing in the church choir so Sarah and I went to Limberlost for a snowshoe hike. Limberlost is free and there were only a half dozen cars there, very quiet.
We did a short snowshoe hike on the sculpture trail before heading home.
We’re back home now, tired and happy. It’s the sign of good weekend that we’re already planning to do it again next year.
But of course, on the way home we listened to the news. The world is still falling apart. I don’t know whether to be more worried about civil war in the United States or world war breaking out over Greenland. Trump’s presidency terrifies me.
Whenever I look at the blog’s stats I’m reminded that although we’re a mostly Canadian blog, most of our readers are in the United States. Last week the blog’s Catherine, who is an American based in the Boston area, wrote about taking part in civic action there. Me, I’m thinking of Minneapolis especially and our readers there and sending you love and support.
This winter is teasing us in Boston with little flakes of snow every now and then, but no proper snowstorms. A few diehard friends have gotten out for cross-country skiing, but the cover is thin and doesn’t last long. I keep waiting for a foot to fall, but so far we’ve gotten an inch here, a few inches there– not enough to tempt me into the cold. Yet.
There is a freezing spray advisory for Boston Harbor today, which I’ve never heard of, but which sounds decidedly unpleasant. Be advised.
The outlook for this week is also pretty unclear about whether and how much snow we might get. I don’t like the adjectives they’re using here. “Few”? “Light”? Uh-uh. Not happy.
“Few” snow showers. Hmmphf.“LIght” snow. Argh.
As they say, though, be careful what you wish for. And in the case of snow, I don’t have to wish– I can recall very clearly the winter of 2015. Boston got nearly 95 inches (241cm) of snow in ONE MONTH. The total that year was 110 inches (279 cm)!
Naturally, this amount of snowfall in such a short time ground transportation to a shusshing halt. Rails froze and track signals failed, buses lumbered as best they could, pedestrians had to use the streets because the sidewalks were buried. And no one could see anything because the snow was piled high everywhere. It was a commuting nightmare.
But for those who enjoy skiing, snowshoeing and walking in a winter landscape? Heaven. Chilly heaven, but heaven nonetheless.
I’m not exactly wishing for those days now, but I am feeling wistful, and intend on luring you into a similar pleasant feeling today.
Here’s my blog post from 10 years ago this February. Let’s take a little snowy journey back to Boston in 2015…
Readers, how’s the snow doing where you are? And how are you feeling about it (or the lack of it)? I’d love to hear about any yearnings, complaints, wishes, memories that you have.
Yes, it may be brutally cold and relentlessly grey, but we’re halfway to spring. And I suppose that is true, but the thing is, it’s not really spring that I’m craving.
I’m not even craving a trip south to warm weather. I know, who am I even?
It feels weird to say this, but what I’m craving is enjoyable winter.
What’s my winter ideal? Sunny, -5, and snowy. That weather, of which we’ve had none so far, is perfect for hiking, dog walking, snow shoeing, cross country skiing, and fat biking.
All of the photos accompanying this post are from sunny winters past.
This very, very grey frigid gloom might be our new climate norm, and I know there are bigger, scarier reasons to care about that, but right now, I’m just desperately missing the bright sun on the white snow.
How’s your winter going, if it’s winter where you are?
An aside: I just had some Australian relatives visiting, and I’m very aware that it’s not winter everywhere.
Out cross country skiing the other morning, I came upon this mother-daughter scene at the intersection leading to one of my favourite trails, a winding climb:
Frustrated daughter, who looked about nine-years-old, laying in the snow across the classic ski track (that’s the two parallel grooves), scuffing one ski into the track. Exasperated mother on skis, standing a couple feet away on the corduroy groomed trail.
As I made the right turn onto my favoured trail, the mother shot me a look of complicity, saying, “…” I don’t know what. I couldn’t hear her, because I wasn’t expecting her to speak to me and my ears were focused on the podcast in my ears. On another day, I might have just smiled, as if I’d heard and carried on with my ski. Instead, I felt myself in the girl’s insistent scuffing. The intensity with which she was destroying the track resonated with my own inner girl’s desire to be and do more. I stopped.
Me: “Pardon me? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
Mother: “I just don’t understand why she’s upset. She can’t ski up this trail. It’s too steep. I can barely ski it.”
Me (interior monologue): “The trail’s not that steep. Oh Mina, stop being so judgy. Also, the trail is actually pretty steep right at the top.”
Me: “Couldn’t she do the herringbone?”
Mother: “No. She can’t do it. It’s only her third day skiing.”
Hearing this, the daughter’s ski scuffing gets more vigorous and defiant.
Me (interior monologue): “What’s the harm in letting her try?”
Me (to the daughter): “Great skis. Look, they’re the same design as mine.”
I extended one leg and put one ski next to the daughter’s much shorter one, highlighting our matching black and red Atomics. The daughter glanced at me briefly with curiosity and then continued scuffing. With that, I smiled in what I hope was a consoling way at the mother and carried on with my ski.
For the rest of my time on the snow, the feminist brigade inside my head talked over each other in increasingly louder voices.
Why can’t the daughter at least try? What the worst that will happen if she tries and fails? That she will be discouraged? That she will never want to ski again? Never want to go outside again? Well, that seems unlikely. And why do I feel certain that this scene would not be playing out this way if the daughter was a son? Or if the mother were a father? A father would tell his son that he could climb the hill. Yes, true, sometimes that goes too far in the other direction. I don’t think the whole boot camp desensitization approach is the right way either. But isn’t there a supportive, middle ground? Somewhere between get-the-fuck-up-the-hill-on-the-double and oh-no-this-is-too-hard-to-even-try. Are we so fragile as girls that we can’t even be allowed to attempt something seemingly insurmountable? Why can’t she be allowed to try and be frustrated and defeated and supported in that struggle? How will she grow her resilience?
I so wanted to encourage that little girl to take on the hill. I wanted to contradict her mother, take the girl’s hand and let her know that she had all the courage she needed to take on this hill and that I’d be right behind her. And if she didn’t make it, so what, she’d have tried and that’s what counted and next time she’d probably make it.
Mina at the top of Drifter, her favourite high trail at Tahoe Donner Cross Country (and where she was inspired to ski after the encounter with the mother-daughter)
There were other voices in my head, who told me that I had no right to even weigh in on the topic, because I’m not a mother, so what do I know about daughters; plus the just plain civil voice who pointed out it was not my place to say anything.
Yes. And.
I still know a little something about girls. I was once a girl who encountered frustrations. And I am a woman who has learned a lot of new things, some of which I’ve failed at and some of which seemed insurmountable when I took them on, and at which I did okay. I don’t have specific memories of my parents preventing me from or encouraging me to take on difficult tasks. There was a general ethos of try-and-try-again throughout my childhood. My parents also sent to me to an all-girls summer camp, run by a fierce woman who both cared about our safety and encouraged us to try hard things. I balk at lots of things, but I want to make my own decision about when I choose not to try or to stop trying. When I look around, I see how, even now, boys have bigger self-confidence than girls. Boys are quicker to claim that they are good at something (even when they aren’t really). I really (really) want this for girls, too.
I dream of a world where all genders are offered equal opportunity to fall down (literally and metaphorically) and be supported as they get back on their feet. So, I dare to write this piece, as a non-mother, to ask mothers: “Please give your daughters a shot at the hill, even if it feels too steep, even for you.”
Some mornings I wake up with a buzz of desire fluttering around my nerve endings. When our enthusiasm matches up and time allows, my partner and I indulge our pleasure. Inevitably though, there are mornings when that is just not possible. Until very recently, my response would be to shelve the buzz in corner, so that I could focus on the practical to-do list for the day.
Or, less productively, I’d be grumpy.
Until three weeks ago. That’s when I started taking an online course on the history and practices of tantric sexuality from the Centre Summum. I’ve been intrigued by tantra practices for more than a decade, but could never work up the courage to actually sign up for anything.
A brief and necessarily incomplete description is that tantra is a spiritual practice (across many traditions) of gathering and harmonizing our feminine and masculine energy. So, yes, tantra is about so much more than sex. And, it’s about sex.
Thanks to the pandemic, the class about sex is online. Thank you zoom for the ability to enroll in classes that would be logistically complicated or psychologically daunting, if they were in person. How much easier is it to show up from home? No one can really see when I blush, nor are there those awkward moments before and after class where we talk about … our sex lives?
We get homework. The first and second week (the third class is tonight, after this piece posts) one of our assignments was to notice those buzzy moments that I mentioned earlier (the class is in French and I love the French word for the buzz—frissons). Instead of setting the frissons aside, as I used to do, we learned to pause and simply savor the sensation of our life force energy. That’s what tantrism calls our sexual energy—our life force, the root flame of our vitality. Well, that was fun homework. Enlivening.
neon sign reading “and breathe” against leafy background, .by Valeriia Bugaiova on Unsplash
Another delightful assignment is practicing Kumbhaka breathing to cultivate our vital energy. Breath practices are key in tantra. As explained in the class, Kumbhaka breath is to cultivate our life force energy. It goes like this:
Ideally (but not necessarily!) done in seated meditation position. Take a deep breath in, moving the breath down from your heart into your pelvic floor. Hold the in-breath for a moment and then breathe out, moving the breath through your root chakra at the base of your spine. Allow the out-breath to continue up your spine, flow over the crown of your head and back down to rejoin the in-breath at your heart. Hold your breath at empty until you feel the urge to breathe. Repeat the breath pattern. Repeat again. You may set yourself a breath count or an amount of time, or you may just do it until your vitality is buzzing.
An online search yields a variety of slightly different descriptions, with prescriptive advice on when and how long to do the breathing. Our teacher, Stéphane, has a permissive spirit, much more about flow than structure. My personal approach is to try out different ways of doing the breath and feel into what works for me. In that spirit, I have a visualization that manifested with the practice. The in-breath is to anchor my life force (my power). The out-breath straightens my spine and as the breath flows over my head and past my face, I imagine putting on a warrior’s helmet. That’s my courage. Finally, as the breath reaches my heart, I tap into love. I’ve been doing Kumbhaka during my meditation, where it feels energizing and helps me focus (not on sex, but on what I need to focus on for the day).
Where I’ve really noticed a difference is when I do the breathing in bed, as I’m waking up on those buzzy mornings when I have to get up and start the day, no time for dalliance. When I go for my workout, which is cross-country skiing these days, I feel extra strong. The first time I felt this abundant energy during my ski, I just chalked it up to feeling happy. After all, spending a few extra moments to breathe into the frissons is happiness-inducing. The second and third times I felt the kick of vitality on my skis, I thought—hey, there’s a pattern. First, I searched around online to see if there was anything specific about my experience. While there is lots about tantric yoga and about other breathing practices and sports performance, there wasn’t anything specific about the particular connection I am experiencing. So, I asked Stéphane, if I was imagining the connection or if the Special K-effect (as I think of it, a reference to the breakfast cereal, not the drug) was a known result? He wrote me back (oh, right; because I did not have the courage to ask the question in class, live on zoom, I waited to ask in writing!): “Yes, whenever we channel our sexual energy there will be a tendency to increase all of our internal energies. It (*our sexual energy) is the source of all our strength.”
Yes! I’ll have what she’s having. Oh wait, I’m the she who is already having. That sentence may have been nonsense, but you get the picture. I’m grooving to this class, even on my skis.
Interestingly, at the risk of over-sharing, but hey, I’m already in pretty deep here: when I actually have sex in the morning, that does not make me feel stronger for my workout. The more likely result is that I am more at ease with however the workout goes. That’s an equally great outcome, since I can get caught up in performance-busting narratives in my head.
And, in case it isn’t super obvious, these practices are intended for all people with sexual energy, whether or not you are in a relationship or solo and whatever gender creates the sparks.
There’s more personal, anecdotal research to be done on this front. I plan to be very diligent about my homework. And if you’ve been wanting a new kick of energy to supplement your morning coffee, check out the Special K-effect for yourself. You can’t fake the deliciousness.
A few years ago, my cross-country ski mate moved to Montana. We had developed a relaxed, yet ferocious, approach to our shared ski workouts—lots of hard work and lots of chat time. My perfect workout partner. After she left, I lost my mojo.
I almost didn’t notice. For the first couple of years I was dealing with the run up and the aftermath of surgery for a neuroma in my foot. Not that I had to take any significant time off; it was more that the pain prior to the surgery dampened my enthusiasm and then I didn’t quite trust the absence of pain. Even as I write this, I know that my diminished energy for skiing was more to do with losing my partner-in-energy-for-fierce-workouts than it was related to the surgery.
When the ski season started this year, I noticed for the first time how many moments I told myself that I wasn’t fit enough anymore to do a workout from years past. For example, I used to ski up certain gradual hills using V2 (the most powerful skate ski stroke; think of it like the hard gear in the big chain ring on a bike). Now, I was intimidated by the prospect. I told myself that I shouldn’t even try until I got in better shape. Now, that’s a vicious cycle.
Then, skiing on December 31st, I suddenly realized—what am I doing? Just try, I told myself. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? You can’t finish the effort you started? What does that even mean? I’m the one who decides when the effort is done. I’m the one who decides whether I made a good effort or a not. And, if I never make the effort, then I can definitely keep telling myself I can’t.
So, in the middle of my ski, I just tried. I alternated V2 with the moderate ski stroke I normally default to. The next day, January 1, as I was finishing my ski, I got inspired. First day of the year, more, first day of the new decade, try on a new attitude. Plus, I was buoyed by my effort the day before. As I approached the hill where I used to do V2 intervals, I decided to throw in one interval. Just one. Just try. The hill was SO hard. I almost coughed up a lung, as a friend used to say. I got to the top. My technique was a mess. I was done in. I felt that nice glow of accomplishment.
Mina and Kristen at the finish line of the Great Ski Race in Truckee, CA many moons ago. Mina skiing up one of her favourite trails this year at Tahoe Donner Cross Country
I’m starting to thread back in bits of workouts from the days with my ski pal. It feels good. Fresh. Exhilarating even, as I feel the fizz of enthusiasm returning. As always, the experience makes me question, where else in my life can I just try more? Just try feels forgiving. More about the intention than the outcome. I’m less daunted. I’m less likely to judge myself, when trying is the key to my pleasure, not accomplishing a certain speed.
On January 3, I did the whole interval workout I used to do. V2 up the gradual hill. Fast as I can around and down the other side. Double pole on the barely-discernible-uphill back to the start of the loop. Six times. Just enough energy left for some ski dancing in celebration.
I feel an uptick of overall life optimism from my new and renewed attitude on skis; a zesty feeling I wish I could bottle for the less pleasant days. But life’s operating instructions are pretty clear: Best Enjoyed Now.
Canadian Protip #1: Find a winter sport that you love, and each snowfall will be met with a renewed sense of fervor and spirit. And if you’re still looking for that special something, go into the attic, dust the dirt and cobwebs off grandma’s skis, and join me.
Jennifer is an amateur philosopher, self-described Trekkie and craft beer aficionado, Jennifer has close to a decade of experience driving innovation and change in the hospitality sector and beverage industries. In her spare time, she enjoys x-country skiing, hiking, antiquing and progressive rock music.
