“Hurry up” my brother says as I am clicking in my snowboard bindings. As a skier, my brother always gets annoyed that I take forever getting my snowboard set up before a run. “Where are we going?” I say. Whenever I am out snowboarding, I tend to follow my brother around, but I like to know our destination nonetheless. “Just follow me” he says as he skis away. Great, I think. Now I know exactly where to go.

I am off following my brother. I slice through the crunchy snow with my snowboard, feeling the cool air and wet snow on my ski mask, freezing it to my face. I hear the howl of the wind as a glide down the mountain, and I see the endless canvas of trees painting the snow in front of me. In front of me I see my brother weaving through people, trying to get down the trail as fast as humanly possible, leaving me struggling to keep up. We go down a black diamond, cut through trees, and I almost wipe out many times doing it. Finally we reach a flat point, and I see my brother disappear around a corner.

At least there is only one path to follow. I think. There is no way I could get lost. The trail is not steep, and as I navigate around its turns through trees it starts to bound up and down like large waves on an ocean. Because of the speed I have picked up, I get air with each jump. Each wave I feel weightless, and each time I crash to the ground I feel shaky. I bound up and down and up and down until on one of them, I catch the edge of my snowboard into the snow and slam my head into the ground, rolling off the edge of the trail.

You’re okay. You’re okay. I tell myself as I am laying off the side of the run next to a towering pine tree. My eye feels wet, and I can barely stand up. My head is pulsing. Where is my brother at when I need him. I hear the wind beckoning me to get up, and the trees reaching out a helping hand. I reach to undo one of my bindings on my snowboard, but to no avail. I take my hand out of the warmth of my gloves to get a better grip, and finally free my foot. I struggle to climb back up to the trail, knowing that help is not on the way. I start to slowly slide through the trail, with my free foot maintaining as much control as possible, slowing myself down as I go over the bumps. I reach the final turn when I hear a humming. As I turn the corner I see a chairlift going back up to the summit. “What took you so long?” my brother says from the line of the chairlift. “Let's go tree skiing”. The last thing I wanted to do at that moment was go tree skiing.