Newton Was a Terrible Ski Instructor

Spring, last week, at Glendhu Bay in Wanaka, NZ

My seasons teaching skiing in New Zealand include an amazing amount of instructing mileage, most of it with beginner and intermediate skiers. Thankfully, it’s the best way I know to vet my ideas, shore up my understanding, and secure my belief in the fundamentals.

Each season, some theme seems to arise from the volume of work that I do which helps put skiing and teaching into perspective for me. That was certainly the case this past season, and that theme is still both cracking me up and informing my teaching. So, without further or due, Russ’s 2017 Big Picture Theme and Groundbreaking Thought About Skiing, drumroll please … wait for it …

Physics is only complicated when you explain it.

I’ve settled on the belief that once kids can run around, throw balls and catch them, annoy their sisters, and figure out that the stove is hot to the touch, their understanding of physics is perfect and all we can do as adults is mess that up. I’ll prove it to you with a few basic examples I’ve been using with guests – adults and kids. You’ll have to use your imagination (you were a kid once so you should have some imagination in there somewhere).

Example 1. First, a non-skiing example to keep it simple. Imagine a kid who’s learned to ride a bike with training wheels and who is heading out for their inaugural voyage without them. First, they adjust their balance going in a straight line. Then, once they're feeling good, they go around the corner. Now, imagine a kid going around the corner on a bike for the first time and tipping the bike the wrong way, to the outside of the corner instead of towards the inside. Huh? Exactly; it’ll never happen. They instinctively know how and in what direction to tip the bike. Now imagine what would happen if you tried to explain to them about tipping the bike going around the corner before they tried it for the first time. This is when you start to sound like the adults in a Peanuts cartoon (blah, blah, blah) and the only other sound you’ll hear if you’re paying attention is the sound of the fun getting sucked out of bike riding.

Example 2. Imagine that all five of us are in the back seat of my dad’s car on the way to soccer practice. Now, we all know that my father drives too fast, and today he takes a left turn way too fast. You, sitting on the far right side of the car seat as you are, get smooshed by the rest of us against the right side, don’t you?! Now, to stop you from getting smooshed will it work if we let our weight go to our right foot, stay strong on that leg and foot as the car goes around the corner? The answer is “duh”, of course it works. This is a good time to practice your quizzical kid, ‘adults are weird’ look – it’s very valuable.

Example 3. A common thing that ski instructors do when skiing with kids across very flat ground is the game of world-wide fame called “pole basket slingshot”. It’s simple: while sliding along your most despised cat track have a kid behind and slightly offset to one side of you grab hold of the basket of your ski pole that you’ve extended back towards her while you keep your hand on the grip, right pole if she’s on the right side, left if on the left (without poking her with it – safety first). Once she’s got a firm grasp, pull the pole quickly forward so she rockets forward. As long as kids understand the goal (e.g. going fast) they’ll know precisely when to let go of the pole so that they slingshot past you. Mix it up, change speeds, sides, facial expressions and you’ll all have a blast as long as you make appropriate sound effects. Explain the physics of the slingshot to them and they’ll suddenly miss their parents and will dread skiing with you forever.

I love talking to adults about skiing in this way, using these examples about our natural understanding of physics. I particularly love it when there’s a kid available to prove the point. Telling parents that their 6-year-old child has a perfect understanding of physics and then proving it never ceases to entertain me, although I usually have to redeem myself with one of my celebrated uncle jokes (“Hey, kid, snot funny. It’s, just, snot, funny.”).

Remember when Bill Clinton addressed the Democratic National Convention as keynote speaker when Dukakis was nominated? He droned on forever and then got resounding applause when he said “In conclusion”. We’re at that point here, which is to say that I’m getting to the point.

Isaac Newton was a great physicist and one of history’s greatest minds but he’d have made a lousy ski instructor. Newton wasn’t the first person to notice that apples fell from the tree to the ground. His contribution was in providing the correct explanation of why and how in a way that allows science to analyze, predict, and precisely calculate the effects of gravity. Without Newton, we’d never have flown in airplanes, launched satellites, or been to the moon. Still, without Newton apples would still fall, our kids would still tip their bikes the correct way going around corners, and skiing would still be awesome with awesome sauce on it.

My second theme from the season is apt here: clarity is more important than detail. Yes, that means clarity in explanation, but more importantly it means clarity in our students’ understanding. When we’re careful about digging further into the details and judicious about letting the curiosity of our students govern how deep we go, we’re more likely to keep things fun and make our teaching more effective for our guests. So, ski teachers, don’t mess with anyone’s clear understanding of something by explaining it. And this also goes for chefs, because I don’t want to know how much butter you’ve used when I’m eating birthday cake.

Our ski season here in Vermont begins in a few short weeks, and I’m looking forward to feeling gravity and lots of other principles of physics without having to explain them too much. Did someone say cake?

Rounding It Out

Have a listen to the sounds from the shoreline near the confluence of the Clutha and Hawea Rivers outside of Wanaka, New Zealand in October.

I have some stock responses to the questions my guests ask about my endless winter. There are the sincere: "Sometimes it's hard to tell whether I chase winters or they chase me;" and "I do miss summer but I gladly sacrifice it for more winter." Then there's the clearly exaggerated: "Winter here is just like the summers back home." I guess there's some truth in each of them. Still, the most important response, and the one that is most relevant now, is this: I may have two winters each year and no summers, but I do get to experience spring twice! Consider whatever poetic line you prefer about spring being a season of renewal, life springing eternal, or the birds and the bees, and remember just how wonderful spring can be. Here in Wanaka, it's ever more the case.

With the business and the renown of Cardrona Alpine Resort growing as rapidly as the town of Wanaka itself, my winter season here is neither marathon nor sprint. It's more of a 440, putting everything we've got at top speed, 100% of the time for four months, without much letup. It's awesome, I love every bit of it and it'll only get better as we continue to evolve, but it can be pretty tiring. Thankfully, spring here hits like a tidal wave of quickly lengthening days, an enormous number of birds that make more and a greater variety of noise than anyone at home can imagine, and gardens that out of nowhere seem to explode into amazing greenery over night. Where I'm living this season, we've got two large bushes an either side of our front door that greet us daily with an amazingly pungent, vaguely fruit-like smell that is so impossibly fragrant that the only apt comparison is to the smell of citrus-scented cleaning detergent, only better, naturally. I am aware that the amount of time I spend in the cold and the snow heightens my appreciation for all of the joys of spring, but I'm equally confident that any sentient being would have the same response upon arrival here at this time of year.

We're in the final stretch now at Cardrona, with less than a week to go until we close for skiing and riding until next year. The remaining resort staff is in high spirits, we've got ample snow to end on a great note, and though we're all ready to stay out of our boots for a while we are all still enjoying our remaining time up the hill. Thankfully, unlike the end of the season at home, we come down at the end of the work day to the valley floor, to the lake side, and to the banks of the river and get to immerse ourselves in all that spring has to offer. Thermals and ski boots and shorts and flip-flops in the same day, every day, is a pretty wonderful thing and is a normal part of my life here.

When there is no obvious end point of one ski turn and the beginning of the next one, when they move and flow from one into the next, it's a good sign. And right now, the same can be said for my seasons, as another Cardrona winter melds into a Wanaka spring in seamless fashion. And it's working for me. Big time.

The Albert Town Lagoon in Wanaka.