The Education of a Ski Instructor, Part Three

There were other gurus at Keystone that winter besides the comely E.

A ski shop employee, a lifer prone to heartfelt clichés, told me, “Skiing is a dance, and the mountain always leads.” At the time, the metaphor was new (to me anyway), and I thought it was brilliant.

A ski-school friend, another apprentice, liked to punctuate conversation with a staccato laugh and the phrase, “Are you skidding me?”