I don’t know when or why I became so fearful.
Of meeting new people. Getting out of my comfort zone. Feeling vulnerable.
I used to relish the chance to do the unexpected and experience the unfamiliar.
I was the only girl from my high school to come to college at UW-Madison. I knew two people here, and I couldn’t have been more excited.
I only knew one other person when I signed up to go to Breckenridge, Colorado with the university’s ski and snowboard club. She proceeded to break her arm, leaving me rooming with 7 other people I’d never met.
It was one of the best weeks of my life.
Four of my roommates had been in Colorado for a week already, so I didn’t have a chance to meet them on the bus ride out. I walked into the room I’d claimed for myself to find one of them unpacking his stuff. “Hi. I’m Josh. Which side is yours?” (The room had one bed.) Uhm, well hello, nice to meet you too.
Josh and his friends were adrenaline junkies who didn’t think twice about tackling a tree-filled run at breakneck speeds or hitting the back bowls. We’re talking stuff that was completely out of my comfort zone. The “black diamond” trails I’d learned on in Wisconsin were glorified bunny hills when compared to even the intermediate runs out west.
So, naturally, when they asked me to hit up the Imperial Summit Bowl on my second day there, I jumped at the chance. (Ok, I might have had just a teensy bit of ulterior motivation; a girl who happened to be into the guy I had my eye on was going, and I didn’t want to be shown up.)
The Imperial Express SuperChair is the highest chair lift in North America, and had just opened a few weeks before our trip. As we made our way to the base of the lift, I was fine – gleeful, actually. Then we started our ascent, and I realized just how steep this run was, and how far out of my league I was about to go.
When we got to the summit, I was ready to park my butt on my board and toboggan my way down the hill. There was no way I was going to make it down.
The guys strapped in, and I followed suite. Was I actually going to do this?
Josh looked at me, grinned, and yelled “BALLS TO THE WALL!!!” before bombing down the hill.
So I went for it, and made it all of 30 feet before I ate it. Hard. But I got up and kept going.
I fell on my ass more than I ever have in my life, and I was pretty sure that if I didn’t break my neck, I would at least lose a few teeth. But I made it to the bottom, board in one piece, with a full set of chompers.
For a seasoned pro, my “run” of the Imperial Bowl would be laughable. It was far from graceful, and my technique was atrocious.
But pushing myself beyond my comfort zone felt like a tremendous success in and of itself. It’s because of that one run that I started doing the runs that enabled me to finish the trip twice the snowboarder I was when I arrived.
Success isn’t black and white; there are shades of grey.
Sometimes, it’s in the in-betweens that we truly grow.
