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Presently, I am crashing around Burlington in a sleep-deprived stupor while I hack my way through the rigors of senior year and plot my next move. I am truly baffled by my more put-together peers.
I am by no means a poster child for balanced living.
I manage to justify this lack of balance with the same logic I use to rationalize why I’m not buying bulk quantities of kombucha from that keg-like contraption at City Market. Maybe it is as good as everyone says it is, but somehow, it just seems unnecessary. This “lack of balance” makes for an artful existence, unlikely futures, and some real good stories.
Actually, there is one circumstance in which I can claim exceptional balance, and that is any time I find myself standing sideways with my feet planted firmly on a board, be it prefaced with skate or snow. I’m not sure whether this can be attributed to nature, nurture, or just some really fine-tuned inner-ear equilibrium business, but I do know that whenever I’m skating or riding, gravity tends to be on my side both literally and figuratively.
This holds particularly true on a snowboard, and the recent night of October snow that rendered the sky pink and the ground white triggered in me a sense of relief. I wear skateboard shoes and bear skateboard bruises, but I don’t know that skating can really touch the hold snowboarding has on me, no matter how many seriously epic College Street spills I can chalk up to my name.
Snowboarding is utterly relaxing and meditative, even when it’s not. Whether I’m pushing limits or not, I am entirely sure of myself. I think the time I honestly feel the most balanced is when I’ve thrown down and wrecked myself all day on some snow-covered hill, and it’s all I can do to hobble on black-and-blue knees to the fridge and crack a beer.
I am no longer a bruised but determined little grom toting a weirdly-shaped board about twice my own height. My bones are now fully formed, and if I wipe out too hard, those bones will break.
This is fact, and I’ve proven it in more than one way. But I’ll sleep easy tonight knowing that snow will soon fly and my sense of balance will soon be restored. |
