Creative Non-Fiction - A Giraffe Among Strangers

A little late but I got it here in the end.
(NB: This is the updated version)

A vicious sheet of swirling white continued to gust through the doorway, the kind of white it hurts to look at, even through tinted goggles, and stings to breath in for its caustic purity. People came in from outside dusted in it, grinning out of warmly exerted faces which buzzed with confidence. They were the most frightening and inspirational strangers I’d ever seen.

I began to tug anxiously at my puffy mittens, trying to tuck them better into my cuffs; they refused to cooperate. It was the cold gusting around me, as much as the brilliant obscurity, which scared me more than expected. A cold which seemed capable of penetrating heavy-duty ski boots as well as two layers of thick socks.

‘Are we going out in that?’ I asked, looking back to where my boyfriend, Jackson, and his parents stood, much calmer than I.

I’d forgotten that my boyfriend was one of those ‘strangers’.

They were all veterans of the slopes, his family having been coming to these same Italian mountains for the last twenty years. There was always a cheerful hello for the ski instructors and the restaurant manager, the same apartments booked year after year in a nearby complex, and an enviable ease when moving anywhere with five foot lengths of sharp carbon fibre strapped to their feet.

‘We’ll give it a little while’ was the reply.

I’d felt more like a new-born giraffe trying to acclimate to its immense limbs with those same lengths of carbon fibre on my own feet.  

Jackson came over to give me a hug, and flashed a reassuring smile as he sat down to adjust the straps on his boots. His were for snowboarding, and so much more forgiving, much less rigid than mine: it was as if my feet had been encased in lightweight stone.

I gave the blizzard one last look before sitting down myself to wait. That blinding white mountainside had already been acquainted with the novice bite of my skis sliding down the tiniest incline, and yet at that moment, I almost felt as if that once had been enough. Skiing was a sport which required more effort than you might think, leaving your legs sore from unaccustomed exertions and stripping you of the confidence that you’d ever improve.

‘I think we’ll give it a go’ Jackson said to me, pulling his ski mask over his mouth and dragging his broad snowboard out into the quiet oblivion.

Still not sure if I was even ready, I tugged at my gloves again, lifted my skis to my shoulder, and followed him out into my own personal snow-globe.