I can't remember snowfall like it for years. Certainly not this early. The odd thing was that the day before that white delivery I'd been riding my kick scooter through the surrounding countryside. Gazing at the rime left by the very first snowfall, I nostalgically recalled the warm beauty of the summer landscape. And the autumn slush, too – like when I rode through mud pretending to be frozen ground. My dog and I then gratefully made do with a heap of glowing ash smouldering near the railway line as proof of human presence. The lads who tend the land along the railway had burned the scrub they'd cut down there.
Warmth, is all you think when, after many hours of riding and pushing a scooter, you suddenly feel the smile of hot embers on your body. You take a few photos as a memento of moments that filled you with satisfaction. Then one last look at Stará hora and its steep slope, and out of nowhere your mind straps skis to your feet and suddenly – I'm already picking my line. Dreamer! At home I replay it all in my head like a National Geographic programme and contentedly close my eyes.
And when I open them in the morning – I find a picture-postcard winter outside, straight out of a Josef Lada painting! At that moment I become a child who can't wait for school to end.
In the afternoon I go sledging with the kids and we even build an igloo!
But it's also as if I'm surrounded by the restlessness of eager ski touring kit that's been waiting in the corner for more than half a year. It's behaving like a dog ready to dash off this very second. It is ready, no doubt about it. But what about me? What about us? The nearest mountains are – if everything goes well on the roads – a two-hour drive from Brno. And besides, where would we even go? How much snow is there? How far can you get? Questions like these queue up behind that first thought of the ski touring set-up.
Never mind, I wave it away as I shovel that incredible dump off the drive. There'll be more winter, I think, as the shovel bites its way through to the gate next to the lane, beyond which – snowy fields stretch far and wide into the distance.
Then it all clicks into place! Besides the “ski mountaineering” category there's also “ski touring”. That's it! I'll simply go on a tour. A tour – on skis.
All of a sudden, thoughts of looking like a ridiculous wannabe ski mountaineer in the field behind the house are gone. I'm a ski tourer, after all!
My clothing hugs me and my kit reports full readiness. I stick my skins on in the kitchen. Beyond the fence around our garden I clip into my skis, and the first slide of my right foot past my left assures me I couldn't have come up with anything better.
Lost in an ocean of snowy fields, calm spreads through me. The sun and the clean white plains let me become a polar explorer, quite literally. Knowing the rolling local landscape lets me pick the best routes. The hills, with their varying degrees of steepness, make the tour a varied affair. I zigzag up a hill. It has never seemed so high, so much fun and so varied as it does now. It's exactly the hill I called Stará hora at the start.
“Why?” I could ask myself as I stand on the treeless summit, looking out over a landscape that is slowly but surely wrapping itself in darkness. The villages lighting up below me bring the atmosphere of Christmas trees all the way up here. I think of my loved ones and feel a little sorry they're not here with me. What I see and feel will be hard to put into words for them later at home; I can only try in vain.
“Time to go home,” the person inside me commands. But the one outside knows he doesn't feel like it one bit. In the track I leave behind me, the peeping moon will soon read my message. So will the sun of a new day. And everyone, in fact, will be able to read in the snow that I was here.
It's strange to think how much information, how many options and how much gear we have, yet we only half use it all, and often not even that. We try to follow templates, as if we didn't realise that nature is more varied than the wildest imagination. There's one catch, though: nature won't come to us; it's only ready to welcome us into its home. It's often closer than we'd expect, and it has stories in store for us that we don't expect at all. And there are as many such stories in the world as there are sparks flying from a fire when you stir the burning wood. Sadly, they also go out just as fast if you don't make use of them.
Turn the sparks into a fire, and it will engulf you in flames of experience.
