From far away, I imagine I resembled an inkblot on a sheet of notebook paper, my dejected form silhouetted against the relentless glare of the snowy mountain slope. Paralyzed on the left margin of the “page,” I watched helplessly as other figures slid from top edge to bottom, gliding like droplets of ink that somehow resisted being absorbed into the “paper.” I had all the equipment I needed to continue down the mountain, my skis and poles lying flat on the snow beside me, and I had taken several skiing lessons in the days prior. I could see in my mind’s eye the swooping curves I needed to make in order to descend in a slow and controlled manner, and I visualized those turns again and again, planning, refining, and wishing my thoughts alone would propel me into action. But rather than pushing me to my feet, any courage or willpower I possessed lay slumped within me like a fussy toddler in the arms of a frustrated caregiver, all boneless, passive resistance to my wishes.
“I recognized this feeling—the feeling of knowing exactly what I needed to do and how to do it, while confronting an obstacle, a steel wall, that denied my abilities and desires.”
I recognized this feeling—the feeling of knowing exactly what I needed to do and how to do it, while confronting an obstacle, a steel wall, that denied my abilities and desires. It was a feeling that had crept up in my creative life when I was about to edit my own piece, or when I was beginning to write down a personal experience. In those cases, I often resorted to distracting myself and pushing off my work to another day—anything to avoid looking at the obstacle directly. There on the mountain, though, with the bleak options of either getting over my anxiety or spending the night in the snow, I had to somehow break through the obstacle I faced.
From my position at the top of the mountain, I saw my siblings looking up at me and assumed they were wondering why I hadn’t followed their trail. Instead, I’d been sitting in the snow for probably ten minutes, a chill beginning to creep through my ski-pants bib and jacket. I pulled my phone out to numbly scroll my apps, as if that would help the situation, only to immediately receive a call from my brother.
“Bro, put your skis on,” he said the second I picked up.
I was defeated but didn’t want to admit that to a person who had started flinging himself down intermediate runs on only our second day of skiing. “Just go on,” I said. “I’ll make my way down eventually.”
“Are you stuck?” he asked, and without waiting for my reply he said, “I’m coming to get you,” hanging up before I could object.
Fifteen minutes later, my brother rescued me, calmly encouraging my slow progress down the mountain and never leaving my side. Once we made it to the bottom, he pointed out that I had indeed been able to ski down the slope on my own two feet. Rather than feeling successful, however, I was frustrated that I hadn’t been able to do it without him, and I passed on his offer to go up the mountain again.
Instead, I returned alone to my aunt and uncle’s lodge, where I decided to throw myself onto the couch to read To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, which one of my professors had recommended to me before I left on a break from college to go skiing with my family. It was a good recommendation. Almost immediately, I fell in love with Woolf’s idiosyncratic style, her focus on the internal world, and the winding alleyways of thought and language down which she sends her readers. Suddenly a passage stopped me with a jolt of recognition:
“She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child.”
These words, of course, reminded me of my creative work, where I sometimes felt a sense of paralysis during “that moment’s flight” from idea to execution. But I also pictured myself on the mountain, mentally tracing turns down the snowy slopes and totally unable to make myself carry them out. Seeing myself sitting in front of a blank screen and then connecting that vision to my defeat on the ski slopes suddenly illuminated the obstacle I hadn’t been willing to examine: my fear of the loss of control.
“I thought of it as like a dance—making choices, and letting go; control, and no-control.”
I wanted to ski because when I had slipped out from under my own anxiety during my lessons, and even when I dejectedly made my way down the slope with my brother next to me, I was exhilarated by the novelty and freedom of gliding down the slope. I loved the view of the looming mountains, the wind on my face, and the alternating feelings of control and loss of control when I pointed my skis downhill and allowed gravity to take me. I thought of it as like a dance—making choices, and letting go; control, and no-control. My first day of ski lessons had taught me that I needed to trust the slip downhill in order to make good, stabilizing turns. During what felt like a freefall into gravity’s force, I shakily counted aloud, “One, two, three—” three seconds for the mountain—and then I threw my weight onto my downhill foot and turned, counting again, “One, two, three—” three seconds directed by me.
Facing a lack of control can be paralyzing, no matter what we are doing. At some point, a writer must give in to the knowledge that their work might not come out exactly as planned or pictured. There is a risk there, as real to some of us as that of a broken bone to a skier. Perhaps this is the foundation of the steel wall of writer’s block that can feel so defeating to many of us. Language is an imperfect means of conveying thoughts and feelings, ideas and memories, but it’s one of the best tools we have, like the skis and boots and poles we use to hurl ourselves down mountains. The product of language leading us where it will, and a writer’s brave effort to carve their own path within it, is writing.
Later on the same afternoon when I read the passage by Woolf, I put my gear back on and trudged out to ride the ski lift. The recognition of a private sentiment, expressed in the beautiful voice of a beloved author, had dislodged some sticky thing in my psyche, letting me face the mountain again. This time, I didn’t fail; I flew.
I haven’t skied since, and I might not ever ski again, but I know I will always be a writer. This necessarily means that I will find myself confronting obstacles again and again, steel walls blocking my writer’s path, or chasms between idea and execution waiting to swallow my intentions whole. I can’t control what my path looks like. My only option is to let my brother’s words, “Bro, put your skis on,” echo in my heart, and trust the fall.
Emma Solis is publishing associate for Modern Memoirs.
