Socrates on Skis (Sort Of)

How peaceful it is to glide around unannounced on flat pieces of plastic they call skis. Why plastic gives you a placid feeling inside is unknown. What is known is that there is a very steep hill you have to ski up and over with a determined face. Turn down the music in your head and focus. Show the hill you are going to conquer it. 

How do you conquer a hill? Can you just go to someone else's land and decide that it is yours now? How can you make a declaration like that? Does the hill even want to be owned? To be conquered?

How can a hill prefer anything? It is inanimate, isn't it? I should hope so. Who would want people walking all over it all the time as if it isn't important? "Walking all over it" has two different meanings as well. Literally, you could step on something and pay it no heed, but you could also ignore and undermine something. Does the hill care?

How strange it is that you would be philosophizing in broad daylight, in the middle of the ski trail, with so many spectators. Why are there spectators? Who would choose to stand in sub-zero temperatures and watch someone else struggle to conquer a hill? The word "conquer" has two different meanings. What type of conquering would the hill prefer? 

How and why does one care what the hill would prefer? Why would you care, while skiing? You only remember that you were immensely bored. Then you remember being sore. Then it all returns to you: why the spectators are there. A race! And you are in it! Ahh. That makes more sense. With only a headband to tune out the sound of silence around you as people stand there, not cheering, not encouraging, you needed something to distract you. And it worked! The only problem is that you still are staring up at the hill, paused in the middle of the trail. You still have to go up it. You have made no progress, but what if the hill doesn't want you to ski on it?

With the snow a white sheet, a blank slate around you, you carve your own path, avoiding the hill altogether. At least it had one less person ignore it. At least one person cared to not ski on it and to go on the ungroomed snow beside it. 

OH NO! What if the snow didn't like being stepped on either?