The Boards of Navarone: A Sneak Attack From Back in the Day
by Billy Miller

Without a sound we pile out. Boot laces get retied, powder pants adjusted, and gloves pulled snug as we converse in hushed tones of gallows humor. When all is complete, we look around before unloading the weapons shiny, cherry-red Sims 1500 FEs the day's tool of choice. One of us has fashioned his own crude version in wood shop class. It's wood-grain with the tag "Fine Line" stenciled across the top. He unsheathes it, grinning with pride. Vowing it will make him first one down

The trail begins. Snow is a deep crystalline, light as hair shaved from the nape of an angel's neck. It is deep. I couldn't have guessed how much so. Each footstep a post hole this still, clear night. We fence out a few acres more.

After a while determined legs move like pistons up and out of the snow, each footfall a guarantee of at least another vertical inch. Steps are added.

Up quickly and quietly past the still-sleeping base lodge. Like ninjas melting in and out of the shadows. Up the just-mown slope, feet smoosh down perfect grids of corduroy. We are making progress and share a quiet joke and a laugh

Red alert! Mouths slam shut as we hear the lumbering cat roll from around the next bend! We beeline for the trees, legs sinking in, powder up to our inseams. I'm a panicked, clumsy fool, treading desperately through solid water to escape the approaching detection beams. My "Fine Line" compatriot plops belly down on his board and paddles surf-style into the thicket. We all follow suit, and finish brushing snow across our bodies as the beast rumbles past, its headlights caressing our backsides. Just as we're about to release our collectively held breath, the cat groans to a stop. Seconds tick by as we hear the driver get out of the cab. Faces pressed in the snow. No breathing or moving. We wait for the approaching footsteps and the hand on the ankle dragging us from relative tree-well safety.

It doesn't come. The driver gets back in after checking some mechanism, then roars back down the slope. We wait a few seconds more before uneasy laughter shakes us from our hiding place.

Then it's up again. Ascending the slope, I marvel at the snow depth we will soon be slicing through. It's a kind of magic the trees beginning to glisten with first shades of early morning light, breath billowing out in sodden clumps. The snow all around. Everywhere. Covering everything. All soft, pillowy, crystalline mass so still, held together by fragments barely touching. We joke and laugh and guy-talk, but inside, we marvel at what can be so utterly transformed by a matter of hours.

Every so often everyone snaps to attentive silence, thinking the snowcat is rolling back up the hill like a Gestapo tank, but it's just overactive imaginings. It gives the scene an added drama. The Guns Of Navarone on two edges.

Soon we are pure exertion, sweat pooling in the small of our backs. There is no talking. Effort locks us in a trance. Each footfall becomes a struggle, but putting five together in a sequence might mean the turn where everything else drops away. A little extra effort affording the one clear moment that defines the day. It drives us on. I feel like Rocky.

The board is in my hands. I drive it into the snow lengthwise, like an ice climber seeking purchase. I've veered off the main run and wedge up the side of the bowl into the fresh stuff. Every footfall is a struggle now. It's heaving my board above me, then two steps up. Heave, two steps up. The group follows this bizarre clean-and-jerk ritual single file up the hill. It leaves weird markings in the snow like those English crop formations everyone swears are UFO visitations. In a way, it is.

Eight steps to the summit. Four steps. Two. Top o' the world, Ma. From this height, the highest point in Arizona I can see where snow country drops into the dry desert valley. I can see clear to the rim of The Grand Canyon. Day is in full ascension. The lifts should be just about open. We pause for a moment. Catch our breaths. Marvel at the effort. At the winterized pillow world below. It looks soft. Untouchable.

This lasts for maybe 8.5 seconds.

I am blazing down the hill. Riding right, turning left, slamming my back foot down into a frontside turn sending a plume of snow careening off the tail. Each step taking so much conscious effort up, falls away by the hundreds in an instant. But we are pure motion once again, just in the opposite direction.

It looks like Heaven. Prancing around on clouds. It feels like Nirvana.

Friends hoot and laugh, drawing near, then veering away. I air, gaining flight for precious seconds. Utilizing the impending terrain, cutting off every lift in snow texture, shooting G-force up every bank, then back down. Scanning the immediate future, I blow apart powder cakes that looked so genteel on the way up. They explode in a way that satisfies at the core.

A mistake in weight accentuation plummets my edge, and I roll headlong through the fluff. I come up, drawing ice crystals down my throat with a deep gasp; choking for a moment. My goggles are caked. I swipe them clear to see my friends not even looking back, slicing in and out of the trees. I'm on my feet and moving like I've never left.

Any notion of finesse gives way to adrenaline-soaked speed. I dart in and out, cutting lines from pure muscle memory. The powder gives way accordingly, blowing aside like the Red Sea before a wave of the hand of Moses. Hyperbole, sure, but in these solitary seconds of concentrated awareness, anything is possible. I am no longer subject to the physical laws of the Earth. My world is a dry, white, canvas and I am a genetic smoothie of Picasso, Van Gogh, Degas, Goya.

I am an artist.

Like an artist, I've looked deep into the fearsome maw of improbability. I am deep in the process of making it so.

After a traverse, then another short hike up a catwalk, I'm on liftline, beneath the hoots and scowls of strange aliens with twin toothpicks on their feet. They jeer, breaking my body bubble of concerted effort.

"Get off the mountain!"

"You guys suck!"

Amidst the insults, snowballs rain down, some lift riders even spit. Though there are a few genuine yelps of appreciation, the mood drowns in sheer displeasure.

But it has led me off the liftline and down a pristine slope of down-covered Volkswagens. The air off the cat track is copious. I stick it in the plushy softness, much to the chagrin of those above. Then it's the gentle clap of board slapping over softened mogul. The speed takes me out at the bottom. Much to the pleasure of those above. It was worth it.

Collected again, we all pause before rounding the last corner. Huffing white air, we know ski patrol has passed overhead and now the radio lines filled with chatter of our presence. We push off for bottom, smiling at the irony.

We find three patrollers spread out across the bottom. They simultaneously look up, see our snowboarding party, and replicate our earlier uphill trudge for a game of Alpine Red Rover. But their objective is to spoil fun, not create it. We pull up to them, years of social conditioning purveying over gut instinct to streak right by for a hilarious finish.

The endgame is instead surreal. They go through the spiel familiar since we knew too well before getting here why we can't ride. It's about how their insurance policy doesn't permit "non-directional devices" within ski area boundaries, like sleds or inner tubes. Funny, I don't feel "non-directional." But we play dumb and act like we don't know, and tell them how dumb their rules sound, and they say they don't make them, just follow them. It's a pointless exchange.

The threat of being arrested by the Sheriff for illegal trespassing looms, but it being a holiday, or our being compliant, or something in the weather, gets us escorted back to the Jeep in the parking lot, never to darken their door again.

We will. Again and again, numbers growing each time. And so many times that finally, majority succumbs to minority and we will be allowed to sit among those who taunted our efforts. Suspended high in the air, legs resting comfortably, getting more vertical in an hour than we could in three months, we will face questions instead of insults. Like an alien.

These too will fade. In the end, all walls come down. Now we're just like everyone, all living and dying for the same precious moments on the same blissful days and the same irreplaceable memories and damn near the same sensations. Even the same reasons.

We smile. We remember.