How to Cope When Ski Season Becomes Mud Season
This article originally appeared on Ski Mag
Q: I just had the best ski season of my life. It was full-throttle, and I had so much fun with my ski buddies every week. But now the snow is melting, and we don't have skiing to rally around. I'm feeling low and funky about the transition. Now what?
A: We get it. Ski season is special. If you're like us, you love the crisp air, the silence of snow falling, the rattle of the chair as it soars under the towers, the seductiveness of first chair, the challenge of last chair, your heart thumping with delight, your body wrecked from pushing just one more bump run, the white smoke that bellows behind you as you set tracks on a clean white blanket, the untouched tree run, the jump you landed for the very first time, the fist bumps, and the shit-eating grins as your friends hoot and holler down the run. Then comes The Drop: The post-ski season blues, the inevitable fall from bliss. You check your phone in the morning for the snow report only to find...rain?
Bleh.
It's mud season.
As two licensed psychotherapists and skiers located in Colorado, we know a thing or two about mud season--in the literal and the metaphorical sense. We know what it's like to drudge from the highs to the lows as we move from the known to the unknown.
Mud season isn't always about the weather, either. It can be any transition between the most incredible time you have ever had and whatever comes next.
Mud season comes between graduating high school and anticipating what college has in store; the scary feeling of accepting a new job and wondering if you studied the right subject. Maybe you moved to a new town and wonder if you will make new friends (sidebar: how do adults make friends anyway?) Perhaps you started a new career and fear being seen as an imposter?
It's the space right after an engagement that is precisely what you want and with who you wish and is somehow still terrifying to imagine forever. It's becoming a new parent with little to no sleep, spit-up on your shirt, and wondering if you'll ever leave the house or have time to yourself again. It's growing older, wondering how long our bodies can keep up with our interests and if anything from our past is valuable to our future.
You see, the more we dig into our stories, the more universal they become. If your question was simply about the end of ski season, we could say, "Wait it out. Next season is just around the corner." But we all know it is more than that.
It's what it left us in its wake: loss of the past, the uncertainty of our future, and perhaps a tinge of disappointment or letdown for the present. Grief and loss are more than just about death and dying; to deny this aspect of our lives is to miss out on some of life’s richest moments. Death is always around the corner. Loss is a part of every single day. Each day that passes, we acknowledge that we will never get that same day back. And yet to accept loss is an invitation for how to live better. It forces us to remain present in the now, with gratitude for what was, what is, and hope for what may come.
And then there is that dang uncertainty again--the looming and most present aspect of your question: "Now what?" We've all asked that question. Find me anyone--anyone--who can't relate to wanting certainty when there is none available. Some of our most significant transformations in life come from our scariest transitions. To be fully open to what's next, we often forget to let go of what is. I think it's all too common that we think we're supposed to simply be excited for what's to come, and what we fail to recognize is the shared experience of grief, uncertainty, anxiety, and fear that often accompanies this step into something new. Whether it's a chosen new or something out of our control, like the end of ski season, we can choose to numb it away, 'take the edge off' of our difficult experiences of the now. We can curse the rain and pending summer, become curmudgeons, and hole up until next winter, or we can calm down our scared parts, tend to our sadness, and steady ourselves through the mud season, one soggy step at a time.
So as mother nature invites us into its inevitable mud season, the same way we willingly or unwillingly enter our internal mud season with each transition in life, we're here to remind you that sometimes this shit is hard--and that's okay. You're not alone in the hard, and hard times will pass because we all know that eventually, mud season will lead us towards green grasses, full rivers to float down with friends, and beautiful wildflowers to hike and bike among. We will not appreciate them fully without this season in between.
When we are forced to do hard things, we do them best when we are not alone. Grab those friends who were once on the mountainside with you and invite them in. Tell them how you're doing. Truly. Reminisce about the epic winter we just had, curse the rain together, then share a meal, play games, laugh together, and do whatever it takes to remember that the mountain was just a symbol for something that already lives inside of you. You do not need the mountain to find yourself or find your joy. The seasons within you are ever-changing. You might as well call it what it is: you are in the mud season of the soul, and only once you embrace the mess of what it is can the magic of new growth begin to take place.
So now what? Get dirty, go play, and feel it all. Mud season doesn't have to be a waste.
Michele J Cooper, LCSW, and Anne Bliss Niess, LPC, are the co-founders of Alive Ventures, a retreat company that aims to unite people to explore the question, "What makes you come alive?" At their core, they are thrill seekers, all-terrain adventurers in every sense, and yet more than anything, they know the secret to a full life is not in the number of adventures they have (though they enjoy many) or how many vertical they go (though they are known to track it).
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