Lately, I've been thinking a lot about skiing, and how it relates to life. You tend to get pretty philosophical after you've found yourself seated not once but a dozen times while trying to learn how to ski bumps.

Lesson #1: One cannot improve without landing on your can from time to time.

So why, at age 43, am I even trying to ski bumps when the rest of my middle-aged lady friends are happy on the lovely, groomed trails with nary a flake out of place? Because I can no longer ski with my children or my husband, and so am being forced to improve.

Lesson #2: Learn young.

I learned how to ski thirteen years ago when I married a skier. My ability level rose to intermediate, then stayed parked there for the last eleven years. It always seemed too hard and too scary to ski the advanced 'black diamond' trails, with their steep embankments and their unexpected outcroppings of bumps, or moguls -- endless seas of small, icy three-foot hills produced by skier's repeated turns.

Navigating the moguls in particular seemed impossible to me. Yet, ironically enough, this is what my husband and my eleven-year-old daughter love to ski the most.

Lesson #3: Whatever your resist in life will eventually come to haunt you.

To remedy my problem, I decided to face it head on. I invited my daughter to go up to the mountain with me on a Saturday, and teach me how to get down the stuff she loves, and she graciously agreed.

We got off the chair lift, and she led me to her favorite field of moguls, a trail innocently enough called MacKenzie. "Just ski it," she advised, and set off to prove her point, zipping this way and that through the first patch of moguls, three-footers that defied any kind of skiing logic I could come up with. I had no idea how I was going to 'just ski it.'

… So there I was, contemplating an entire field of 3 to 5 foot iced-up moguls on one of Whiteface's toughest trails, wondering why I'd ever decided to improve my skiing.

That's when the words of my friend Christine, a former ski instructor, came back to me -- "Don't look at the trail below you. Just figure out where you're going to turn first. Then look for your next turn, and your next. Pretty soon you'll be down it."

Historically, I'd always stood at the top of the trail, nursed a good five to ten minutes of panic, then made a decision I couldn't ski the thing, and promptly slid my way down to the bottom, mostly on my butt. Or I defiantly took my skis off and walked down along the edge. Or I harangued my husband for a good few minutes.

Never, once, had I just calmly tried it.

"Let's go, Mom!" called Teal, waiting patiently. So I set off, looking for the spot for each turn I could make. I turned once and my skis, quite improbably went up over a mogul, down it, and around the next one.

I turned again, and set my sites on the next turn. Again and again, I kept finding the next turn -- and suddenly it dawned on me. Not only was I skiing the dreaded moguls, but it was exactly like pursuing your dreams.

We want to stand at the top of our particular challenge, and scope out exactly how we're going to make it work. But we can't really know that until we're deep in the middle of the work. The greater the challenge -- just as with the steeper terrain in skiing -- the more you must rely on your gut wisdom to carry you through, telling you where to turn and what to do next. You cannot stand at the top of the run and figure it all out in advance. Life simply doesn't work that way.

Trust yourself -- especially on the scary stuff.

I found my way down MacKenzie that morning with surprising ease. I fell a few times but somehow the automatic Voice of Resounding Shame didn't resound quite as loudly. And I learned another amazing thing:

Lesson #4: If you're skiing under control on a steep slope and you fall, you can pop right back up again.

In the past, when I'd skied the Beginner and Intermediate terrain, getting up again was hell.

I'd have to take off a ski, get on my hands and knees, and struggle upright again. But here, the angle of the mountain -- or possibly my adrenaline -- literally pushed me right back to my feet.

Again, my mind went to life parallels, and I thought of the way we respond when we're deep in pursuit of our dreams. The stronger our commitment, the faster we get right back to work after we hit a snag. We simply want to feel that magical flow again.

Lesson #5: The steeper the challenge, the faster you get back on your feet.

Whether you ski or not, challenges most certainly await in some corner of your life. I invite you to ski straight into them, and just keep looking for where to turn next. If you keep your course steady and methodical, and you don't start racing out of control, even your falls will provide moments of quiet strength.

Happy trails.

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