Ode to Skiing

Art by Gil Elvgren. Courtesy of Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York.

The water is frothy and suspect at shoreline. Muck meets grass and things float in stagnant pools: chunks of scummy Styrofoam entangled with tackle and nudged by brown bottle glass, the labels worn away. Locals get drunk at the lake, trash it up.

Not you: By the end of the day, your limbs will sing a blue gospel; by tomorrow morning you'll be sore in strange places. You'll roll out of bed, wincing, loving the pain. You are not just a girl with smooth, shaved legs. You are strong.

Never mind that there is no linear progress to this endeavor, no careful practice and no competition. It's all about leisure and idleness and loops around the unchurned pockets of J. Percy Priest, aka Judas Priest Lake, as the classic-rock dudes have christened it.

Start at the put-in, where a lot full of boat trailers is an ominous sign: There will be chop. Aged, cracked asphalt burns your feet as your father backs the trailer down the algae-slick ramp. The boat settles into warm brown water and gasoline vapor. You crank up and the outboard begins its Parkinson's-like shake. It is just a motor, but something about the tremor of its large, rectangular head seemed menacing when you were younger. Even now, you'd rather not sit near it.

Your father is the captain, the expert skier-puller. You are the first skier-into the lake you go.

You crouch, buoyant and waiting in warm brown water, the nose of your slalom ski just peeking above the surface, while he takes out the slack. Maybe you take the opportunity to empty your bladder into the lake. Nobody will ever know.

"Hit it!"

And he hits it, and you're pulled forward, a flood in your face. Water is all you can see. The goal is to rise up fast, unfold to standing, and stay that way. But after an elegant start, you shimmy and lose balance-overconfident?-and wipe out. Your ski pops free of your foot and floats away. Dad eases back on the throttle and circles around. You sputter, push hair out of eyes, and frog-leg it over to that runaway ski. Get back here, you! Of course, you're going to try again.

Push the ski beneath the water, squeeze your foot back into the rubber binding, and wait for the towrope to skim by close enough for you to catch. "I'll bring it to you," Dad says, and he does, expertly. Let the wet rope buzz through your fingers and watch for the handle to come bumping over the surface, playing right into your hands. Grab it, and you're tugged through the water until the boat stops and he waits for your command:

"Hit it!"

You're going to do this until you get up and stay up. You will ski longer than anyone else who skis today. You'll slice back and forth across the wake. You will stay up, lifting the rope handle high above your head as you arc out wide in glassy pockets, your body a thin angle away from the surface. Clutch the handle close as you tighten, defiant, to a squat over choppy spots. Inevitably, you grow weak, and a hump of water catches you. Then you are really down, slammed face-first into the lake. For a few seconds, everything is black. Your ski is far-flung again. Hell. Let Dad pick it up. When you climb back in the boat, the fatigue is delicious, the kind that only results from hard play. Your legs are jelly, warming against the sunbaked seats, your towel damp around your shoulders. Check your tan line.

Right now, you think summer will equal waterskiing, sore legs and arms, a cooler full of drinks and snacks, and visible tan lines forever. True love always.

But next year, you'll get a summer job, and there'll be no time for trips to the lake; the year after that, Dad will sell the boat. You'll move away, get other, bigger jobs, and whole summers will pass without so much as a swim. And waterskiing, when you stop to remember it, will have lost some luster. All that fuel, noise, pollution. None of the lodge-fashion chic of snow skiing (something you've never tried). Still, you'll long to feel the rope slide through your fingers again as the slack goes taut, as you prepare to be lifted, propelled up and across the water by the collusion of machine, gasoline, and your own tender young muscles. Is it like riding a bike? Does your body never forget?