A case of nerves

Every day for a week I've woken up feeling nauseous. I'm jittery, shivering and nauseous.

It's nerves.

When I was a girl – about my son's age – and started traveling for gymnastics competitions, I'd wake up nauseous like this. I never could eat any breakfast; and then my nerves acting on an empty stomach would cause dry heaves. Once I nearly puked the whole drive from Hazelton to Philadelphia. My poor father.

I thought I'd outgrown this tendency. I haven't felt morning nausea since I was 14.

Turns out I just haven't been doing things that make me nervous.

We've going backcountry skiing. My husband and me. Next Wednesday we're driving 10 hours to Nelson, BC, where we'll catch a helicopter to a mountain-top resort. For three days, all day, we'll ride the powder in the interior mountains of British Columbia. We travel by snowcat...

I'm really nervous.

It's the claustrophobia. I get panicky in deep snow. Also I broke my arm once crashing into a tree and I really, really do not want to do that again... Luckily for the last few weeks we've had a fair bit of powder at Mt. Bachelor – two Fridays ago was epic – so I've been addressing my fear: taunting it: daring it. I snowboarded in three feet of new snow (the snow that Ullr brought) with my daughter, who got stuck three times; I had to unclip from my board and wade through it to rescue her. I snowboarded in eight surprise inches of new snow with my son, who got himself stuck once in a tree well and once in a wave; I had to unclip from my board and wade through the snow to rescue him. I haven't gotten myself stuck, but I have been riding as much as I can through the trees, searching out untracked bits, meandering, playing. If I feel I may be too close to a tree I throw myself into the snow, poof! and then have to figure out how to get back up and going again.

It hasn't helped. I'm still nervous. Mt. Bachelor just cannot replicate for even ten turns the untracked powder in the interior mountains of BC.

EEEEK!