We spent the past 4 days cross-country skiing in the White Mountains region of New Hampshire. We stayed at an Inn, a nice Inn if you like Inns because all of its Inn-y characteristics were hyperbolic. The innkeepers were chipper and helpful to the point of being freakish. The food was choke full of sugar and butter. The hallways and rooms were cluttered with atmospheric memorabilia and a crush of Christmas decorations, including a lavishly decorated Christmas tree in every room, even the atrium next to the hot tub. Inn-tense, one might say.
Like I said, it was a nice Inn and we took full advantage of its amenities, but perhaps it’s telling that we don’t have a single photo of the Inn on our memory card. Instead, we have dozens of photos like this one:
We managed to ruin the Inn’s cozy ambience by stalking around in our hardiest cross-country gear: Goggles, sexy pants, face masks, anything to stop the steady vicious wind that beseiged the region for the past week. Here’s me in full ski regalia, posing with a cloud-obscured Mount Washington as the wind ravages me (note the cloud of snow dust blowing in front of pine tree):
The temperatures were frigid, but luckily XC skiers can recreate tucked within the trees rather than on the top of a mountain like those poor freezing downhill skiers and boarders.”Its cold out there,” one woman griped to me in the Inn’s lounge. “Oh, it’s brutal. Did you go skiing?” I asked, eyeing her LL Bean parka. “No, we went shopping at the outlets,” she said, sipping her margarita. Most of the other Inn guests were sedentary, intent on soaking up the Inn’s romantic atmosphere and exhausting its meager library of DVDs. I pitied them somewhat for not having known the pleasure of gliding through a snow-filled forest.
The French have a quote about how hunger is an essential ingredient for a good meal. I feel that physical exertion in the outdoors is an essential ingredient for relaxation. Since my half-assed New Year’s resolution entails a renewed commitment to my extracurricular writing, I planned to devote some of the vacation to writing. But between XC skiing for 5 hours a day, eating for the energy to XC ski 5 hours a day, and canoodling in the Inn, I had no time or inclination to sit down with my laptop and peck away at the keys. And since I’m relaxed for the first time in over a year, I’m not feeling guilty about it. Here I am posing again in front of Mount Washington, lamenting the desuetude of the picnic table.
