I originally began drafting this essay in March of 2021, when physical limitations which I will explain in due course hampered my ability to ski well, as well as to do other activities, and created a great source of pain in daily life. Since that time, I’ve managed to put this limitation behind me, a topic for a future essay at some date. Last March, I updated this essay reflecting the progress I’d made. Today, I include the final chapter. While I’ve revised the initial passages, I’ve retained the gist of what I wrote in 2021 and 2024.
Athletes and thrill-seekers sometimes talk about a concept called flow. Flow is a highly-sought mental state in adventure sports like surfing. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to an experience of heightened living sometimes achieved by masters in their fields, during moments of complete absorption in their craft, when they are completely consumed by what it is that they are doing. Oftentimes, flow comes during moments of great physical exertion and serious risk. Flow occurs when you are living so fully that, “you forget that you are alive.” You feel as though you have merged with your task. You are so focused on what you are doing that the free-throw, the pitch, the pass simply spills out of you in perfect form.
Surfers talk of “becoming one with the wave,” and as hokey as that sounds there is some truth in what they say. In the state of flow, a person so fluidly performs their chosen task that their mind blurs the distinction between individual and task. Flow usually occurs at the highest levels of skill. Though ordinary people can achieve flow doing normal tasks (or playing a sport recreationally), typically we think of Olympic skiers, base jumpers, elite mountain climbers, MMA champions, etc.
I am not sure that I have ever achieved a state of flow while running. For all but the best runners, the activity is too difficult and too arduous to lose oneself. It could only happen on a very easy run, which feels so good that the pace speeds up surprisingly fast so that you feel as though you are flying along the ground. Any running which is challenging or demanding will feel too uncomfortable for all but perhaps elite runners to experience anything like flow.
Perhaps I have while writing. At times, the minutes seem to slip away and the words flow and I am loathe to give up the task and when I pause from writing for the day, I feel more alive than at many other times of my life. But if you believe, as I do, that true flow usually only occurs in moments of physical movement or physical risk, then certainly tapping away at my computer, no matter how absorbing the topic, cannot come close.
But I believe I have achieved flow when skiing. During a period in college, when I hit my peak skill, I could hurtle down a slope, any slope, and feel the trail with my body. I was in complete control and could chose my pace, slow or fast, as I saw fit. Often, I sought to push the utmost bounds of speed. I would throw myself down the steepest slopes I could, at the edge of my control, my heart in my mouth. Sometimes I would have close calls. I skied at the edge of danger.
At the best of times, I was alone and the slopes were uncrowded, even deserted. I could throw myself down, ski right up to a lineless lift, ride up, and keep going, without breaking the momentum. I kept the pauses as short as possible, which is critical if you don’t want to lose the moment. If you pause too long, you go out of flow.
Crowds kill flow. Lines kill flow. Waiting kills flow. You need to be alone. Interruptions, however momentary, bring you out of that state and back into the world.
Perhaps the critical idea is that I could “feel” the trail with my body. While I was always aware of what I was doing (i.e., aware that I was alive), when I was in flow (or perhaps in “the zone” as some athletes say), I experienced an ability to directly sense the trail below my skis.
There isn’t anything supernatural about that. Athletes often talk about how the bat or the ball or the hockey stick becomes almost an extension of their body, and what they are describing is a moment of being hyper-aware, such that they can glean more information from their feet or hands or eyes and react to it more quickly than most people can most of the time. When I was in a state of flow, if I was in a state of flow, I could pick up on subtle information through my feet and my eyes which normally would go unnoticed.