November Rain

Keith, fully prepared for November.

Guns ’N Roses once wrote a song about November Rain, and how it is hard to hold a candle in it. In our lives, the candle could be a metaphor for spirit, or for hope, or the flickering desire to keep training while the heavens drop 34 degree rain on us as the day gets dark at 4:30, or 4:00, or just never really gets light at all.  Sometimes the snow gods tease us with a late October cold snap, and a snowstorm that blesses Middlebury, but not quite us, with skiable snow.  Maybe this year, we think, there will be no November Rain. Maybe everything that New England has taught us—that this month should be endured with Stoicism, with Strong Resolve and a Stiff Upper Lip—will be unnecessary, because we’ll just glide through November in hard packed tracks.  But this has not ever happened.  And while the sixty-degree weather last week was fine, we know that when everything shakes out, it’s going to be pouring rain on us as we do intervals on Petersburg Pass, or slog through four inches of freezing mud on the Taconic Crest.

So why keep trying? How to forge on through this month of despair? We have a bottomless pile of work, only a minor vacation on the horizon, and we have no friends because we only hang out with the Ski Team. Fortunately, we only need to look back to Slash and the gang for inspiration.  As we hear GNR belt it out: “so never mind the darkness, we still can find a way, 'cause nothin' lasts forever, even cold November rain,” the words ring true in our minds and hearts.  No matter how bleak the outlook, December is on the horizon.  Promises of snow (knock on wood) and all it brings, a long winter break, and the start of the racing season must drive us forward.  We can look with fondness on the summer months and the blissful beginning to a Berkshire fall, and we realize that all our hard work will come to fruition in the snowy months ahead.

Remember this?

Perhaps November is here to make us appreciate the winter fully.  Perhaps without the darkness and despair the enjoyment would be dampened.  Better one miserable month now than six in a row that are mediocre.  And while it has been nighttime since 2:30 today, I know the sun will rise again (but probably not tomorrow, or the next day… or even for a week at this point, according to the forecast).  So we must persevere, and have fun, and treat awful runs like adventures.  We need to rejoice in the few friends we do have, and try to be supportive, to help each other through this month.  And we can wear our team jackets, and wax the boards in the ski room, and listen to The Sounds, to start to get in the winter spirit.

 

November is half over already.

Slash shreds... and provides some insight.