I Believe in the Power of Cold Air: Student Essay
My home is not in a house. My home is on the small, 6 trailed ski mountain in Vermont where I spend every weekend in the winter. This snowy hill has taught me everything I know about myself. It is where as soon as I could walk, I was placed on skis to discover my passion.
The saying “home away from home” is commonly used to describe a place one loves and that makes them happy although they do not live there. However, in literal terms, it doesn’t make much sense. How can there be a home that isn’t a home? In that perspective, what even is a home? The dictionary says it is “a place where one lives”. I live in Providence, Rhode Island, but I wouldn’t call that my home. To me, a home is a mountain that has the remarkable competency to show me who I truly am.
There are always people filing into the chairlift line and people crowding the trails. However, at 7:35 AM, I’m home alone. I open up the doors with the click of my bindings. The lights are turned on with the sun’s rays glaring onto the freshly groomed snow. I ski down the hallway. Two rights, and a slight left and I’m in my own room, the trail “Clean Break”. True to it’s name, it is a clean break from everything. Everything holding me back, and everything clogging my mind. The wintry atmosphere with mountains circling me and the iced over lake in the distance, freezes time.
Once I reach the trail’s plateau, the crisp air piercing my face, I am ready. I put my goggles up onto my helmet, so my eyes can witness and feel the wrath of the wind. They water a little bit, but just because it’s the only way they can embrace the blast of power that comes alongside the rushing air. I let my skis fly beneath my feet down the steep drop. The crunching sound of sharp edges carving into the snow is just as heartwarming as any “welcome home”. The frigid air that is now behind me contains anything I thought I couldn’t do. Everything in front of me is an opportunity. I am truly alone on this long, but not long enough, run that starts my saturday and sunday mornings. There are no voices contradicting me, there is no cell phone I am preoccupied with, there is just me. I feel more alive than ever. My strength is intensified by the rush of the energizing breeze. The towering peaks surrounding me don’t seem so big anymore. The arctic air pulls them down, and pushes me up.
While I tore through the trails of my home, I realized that I believe in cold air. The cold air that can give me a short and clean break from any worries, stress, or doubts that normally wear me away. The cold air that crawls down the back of my neck revealing my fortitude, ambitions, and tenacity, is what I believe in.

