Nature

A ski day means up at dawn. Dozy, half-awakening, drifting in and out of dreams. The flannel is warm, and the mattress is cloudy soft. But it’s up, sliding out of the billowy world of down blankets and fleecy comforters. Feet scrunch on the thick creamy carpet, hands reach for that glass of water you never finished last night. You sip it, slowly, in the dusky corner of the blue-and-teak room where the world is hovering between dusk and dawn. You gaze out at the pines, the softly falling snow, and the moose tracks like a finger drawn through icing. The room is dark and quiet, and the chair by the window is cold. Feet curl under, and cardinal birds flap in your stomach like it is Christmas. Your hair, morning-messy, falls over one shoulder. It’s too early to think or do or say. This is the time to sit and sip and look out at the awakening world. This is the time for blue-and-teak quiet. The snow ceases to fall, and now it’s gray, but more like the English gray Gray like a gull’s wing, gray with snow waiting to fall. And you hate to leave the chair by the window, hate to acknowledge the fact that it’s five AM and you aren’t sleeping, but you have to. So you slip on a sweatshirt, open the door to let in a slice of the rest of the house, a slice big enough for you to slip out. You walk across honey-wood floors in the kitchen, turn on the lights. Your sister Grace pops out from the pantry making you jump. “Never. Do. That. Again. Before. Eight AM.” “What’re you doing up?” your sister asks. She knows perfectly well, but she also knows that you are incapable of full sentences before io:3o in the morning during vacation. Nu don’t know why or how or when you’ll get home but for now all you need is this “Too. Early Lemme alone. Pop-Tarts. To pop. Shoes. To buy Places to ski. Move.” She moves. Strawberry Pop-Tarts are sweet and sugary in your hand, warm and golden from the toaster. You eat them your special way, peeling the icing off, licking the jam. Gross, but otherwise it’s bad luck. Doesn’t everyone know that? The kitchen begins to hum, and it’s still too early to talk, and you know people will tease and make fun of your inanimate self if you stay So you go, curling up on the stairs, which is very strange, but it’s too early to care. And then, when the gray gray sky begins to let down the snow again, people—girls—get ready Ski boots and ski pants and parkas. Masks, which you never wear because you managed to actually find a cute ski hat in Teton Village last week, which is amazing. Soon you are in the garage, dressed and warm and with both gloves on, and you have no idea how you got there. You open your mouth to object, but someone—your older sister Lindsay—crams a scarf around your neck. You sadly realize that the cute hat is not on your own head, but when you begin to speak, you get a mouthful of red wool. So you kick Lindsay, and she kicks you back, but gently, because she is seventeen, and it’s time for ski boots, ski poles, cross country skis. Someone complains about you being so still, but you don’t care as long as boots are on your feet and skis are on the boot and you actually have ski poles and you know today is ski day Ski Day, talked about all your life, always secret, but today you find out, because it is the holidays, and the day before Christmas Eve, and yesterday was your thirteenth birthday “Hush! Hush!” The whispers circle around the drafty concrete garage, and boots stamp and your toes tingle. Grace and Lindsay and all the other cousins, aunts, moms, veterans of this. But for you—it is new, it is new, and you’re beginning to wake up, and the cardinals in your stomach flutter once or twice. And you feel sorry for your sister Mimi, only ten years old, stuck in bed, but that was you all your life. Until now. And the garage door opens. Creaky, groaning, will it break? One by one the figures file out, and when it is your turn excitement is salty on your lips. Skis slip from garage to snow, and you tilt your face up to the pink-and-gray sky, and the gray snow, and you laugh out loud, and it is like a baptism, pure and sacred and holy, snow on your face and shoulders, snowflakes melting on the black leather gloves. And because you can’t help yourself, you catch one on your tongue, and the cold shocks. And you are fully, fully awake, for the first time in your life at 6:30 AM, because how could you not be? You follow everyone, side-slipping down the steep side of the driveway She wasn’t supposed to, but Grace, fifteen and competitive and a downhill skier, has been taking you outside ever since the snow started in November, teaching you how. You hear her voice in your head, “Side, Sophie, side and back, skis straight, hold—do it right! Don’t embarrass me!” and you do it right, and Grace turns her blond head around to wink one brown eye. “Good job, Soph!” Lindsay catches on, the wink is obvious, but Queen Linds just laughs and holds her head higher. You ski all day, across rivers and down trails and forging the trails on vast expanses of plains where you pick wildflowers in the summer. The world is different, transformed, under this mantle of powdery white, and it has been for two months but you have been too busy to notice. But now you do, and your breath is shallow. You are awed, aware of the sacred, quiet, still, pure beauty, and you want to shout. You

When I grabbed my sweatshirt and started running out of the house, there was no rational reason for it. I wasn’t sure where I was going or why I was going there. I just needed somewhere to escape to. I felt so out of place in my house. What I was so sick and tired of, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that if I stayed at home any longer, my heart would burst and the jelly of me would spill all over the creamy porcelain kitchen tile. Running can make you feel like you’re not even in your own skin. You’re not stuck in a body, your mind is free to go wherever it wants to visit. My legs kept moving, moving, moving, and my destination was like the leaky faucet in the guest room bathroom that you never think about: lost in the tangle of thoughts that infest minds. Actually, I didn’t care where I was running to. The wind brushing at my face was soothing, and as my legs moved in a rhythmical motion I could feel my feet pushing off the ground with every step. As I ran, I closed my eyes and let my feet absorb everything that surrounded me. There was welcoming, cake-batter-like ground, lumpy and soft, that made my feet dance a shhp shhp shhp dance. Then there was the thud thud thud of my sneakers on cold asphalt, the yellow brick road of city people. Pebble Beach: Welcome! The sign surprised me because my house was eleven miles away from the beach. Slowing to a walk, I kicked off my shoes and carelessly left them in a pile by a piece of driftwood. The beach isn’t all seashells, sand, and water It’s a whole world… Along the seashore, I observed all of my surroundings. The beach was an incredible place. The ocean had always been stunning to me, because it’s always there. No matter what’s happening in the human world, you can count on the salty seawater tickling the shore to be there. Little holes in the path I strolled gave a preview of the crab life beneath all of the caked sand. I had always wondered how the creatures breathed down under the ground. Did they get claustrophobic? Were there oysters on the seashore? My little sister Leah had always wanted a pearl in its shell. Since I was in a pondering mood, I let my mind wonder and wander. Didn’t the grains of sand that came before a pearl could be made hurt the oysters? Wouldn’t it be like a permanent itch? The oysters couldn’t do anything about it. If I were an oyster I would just want that grain of sand out of my shell. Out of my life. But if I couldn’t get it out, what would I do? I would… try to make the best out of it. Maybe that’s what a pearl really is. A result of patience, endurance, and finally, a beautiful, smooth treasure. I had never really become conscious of the fact that the beach’s beauty wasn’t all in the view. The beach isn’t all seashells, sand, and water. It’s a whole world, from seaweed cartwheeling onto the shore, to the symphony of seagulls’ shrieks. And, like so many other things, it has meaning behind it. The ocean’s steadfast trustworthiness and an oyster’s patience, labor, and finally triumph were examples of what could happen in my life. Next time my sister clung to me like a wet swimsuit, I wouldn’t shrug her off like usual. I would listen to her and help her feel less insecure, even if she was irritating. I’d make the little things in life become my grains of sand, and I’d turn them into pearls. A day at the beach, exposed to nature’s examples of patience and dependability, had eroded all my frustration at city life away, and with a fresh perspective about my world, I was ready to go home. Katharine Pong, 12Burlingame, California