Shribman: The love of skiing is eternal

Skiing is for all ages, and for all time. (Reuben Krabbe/Ascent Xmedia)

Brian — he’s in Florida. Cindy — she’s given up skiing. Bob — he’s also abandoned the sport. Jeff and Pete — away for the winter. Elizabeth — she’s converted to cross-country. Ray — he’s seldom available. Natalie — working all the time. Jason — one day was enough. Andrew — he’s in Europe. Sam — escaped to Hilton Head. Elliot — concentrating on tennis.

It sure is a lonely ski season for me.

It used to be that I had tons of ski companions. Folks to accompany me on expeditions throughout New England. A bunch of people crowding with me onto the chairlift. A clutch of friends to join me in telling lies around the fire. A crowd willing to go away for a ski weekend.

My friend the Harvard professor Bob Putnam made a splash 20 years ago with a book called “Bowling Alone.” It spoke of how Americans had become atomized, existing in their own small circles, seldom joining others in their pursuits.

If he were in a winter-sports turn of mind he might be prompted to write a sequel. It would be called “Skiing Alone.”

Before you rise up in rebellion and argue that skiing is the most social of sports — we put on our boots together, we clamber into the lodge for lunch together, we even have a special line for “singles” that forces us to ascend the mountain together — let me stipulate that my conundrum is really a question of my age, not of the age.

By that I mean that skiers of a certain age — you know what that means, a concept dating to Lord Byron’s euphemism for a middle-aged person, or one quite a bit older — are by nature less adventurous. Less willing to barrel down a black-diamond trail crusted with ice. Less eager to brave sub-zero temperatures. Less adept at powder. Less resistant to go to Florida or Arizona.

In short, less in love with winter.

This is a problem for me (looking for a ski partner) but also — eureka! — a problem for them.

Haven’t they read the National Institutes of Health report on the benefits of alpine skiing? Probably not.

This study — with the inviting title “Influence of Alpine Skiing on Health-Related Quality of Life and Physical Self-Concept in Physically Active Adults over 55 Years of Age” — might not be the sort of document circulating in the Starbucks in Boca Raton. But it is worth a serious examination.

Because here is the welcoming introduction: “Older adults have the highest rates of a sedentary lifestyle. Alpine skiing could be considered a suitable activity to encourage continued sports practice and improve the health of this population in winter. The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between the practice of alpine skiing and health-related quality of life (HRQoL), physical self-concept (PSC), and sport motivation.”

Now that is what I call fine literature. There’s nothing like a reference to HRQoL to set a skier’s heart aflutter.

So let’s plow ahead. Consider this report the analogue to Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now”:

“The so-called lifetime sports are those that can be practiced at any age and in which intrinsic motivations such as fun or health predominate, being the most practiced by older adults. Among the lifetime sports that can help increase the [physical activity] rate during winter is alpine skiing, as it is one of the most popular outdoor sports activities at this time of the year. Despite the complexity of learning it and not being exempt from certain risks, it is a sport that allows a very early initiation, which subsequently facilitates high adherence to the practice, with a very low dropout rate, and which complies with all sports practice recommendations for the older adults, even if they have chronic diseases.”

I’m not so sure about the “very low dropout rate” but otherwise, I’m all in, especially now that I know that skiing is considered “an intervallic strength-endurance sport performed at medium-high intensity, which mainly generates improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness and in the strength of the main locomotor muscle.” Plus this: “Regarding mental health, studies are still scarce, but it seems that [skiing] could contribute to maintaining and improving mental health in adults. Improvements have been observed in some psychosocial factors, such as mood, self-concept, levels of depression, and levels of life satisfaction.”

What’s not to like?

Just the other day my wife (skier emerita) and I were talking about how we are going to spend winters in years to come. A spell of warm weather, to be sure; nothing wrong with that. But throughout the conversation I kept returning to the one true religion: I’m willing to walk on the beach. But I don’t want to lose winter.

I don’t want to lose the bracing cold that oftentimes is accompanied by a brilliant blue sky. I don’t want to lose the romance of a soft snowfall. I don’t want to miss the intoxicating beauty of first tracks after an evening storm. I don’t want to forego what a beloved Dartmouth College anthem called “the crunch of feet on snow.” Above all, I’m not willing to abandon an HRQoL or a PSC. You shouldn’t either, no matter how old you are.

David M. Shribman, executive editor emeritus of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, did not win his Pulitzer Prize for ski writing. He has skied in 14 states, three Canadian provinces and five countries — and, frequently, after classes at Dartmouth College.