"Cross-Country Snow" by Ernest Hemingway

Vocabulary needed to understand “ski lingo”:

•  Funicular – cable railway: a railway up the side of a mountain pulled by a moving cable and having counterbalancing ascending and descending cars
• Undulation – wave: an undulating curve
• Khud – A ravine; a steep cleft in a hillside
• Telemark – a turn made in skiing; the outside ski is placed ahead and turned gradually inwards
• Christy – a skiing trick that involves lifting one’s leg off of the ground and leaning over to the side while doing a curve
• Why does George call him “Mike” (what does that mean)?
• Decies - ?

This story is set in Switzerland I think. For one Nick and George are in the inn the girl is speaking German (European area?) and there are Swiss men that come in to drink while they are there. Also there are the Swiss Alps for skiing and finally George is talking about catching a train (common in Europe) to get back to school and Nick is talking about returning to the “States”. Perhaps this is a wrong assumption but that’s what I seemed to have understood. 

In this story Nick and George are obviously having male-bonding time by enjoying skiing and drinking together. They try and do tricks and go as fast as they can while skiing showing some friendly competition. I have been skiing many times since I was little and when with friends we would always try doing similar things (both tricks and falling hard when we tried to push ourselves). It is different in this case though because they are alone in a remote area and they are skiing in the middle of a storm which creates a lonely feeling. I might just get this feeling though from the fact that at the end we discover that Nick is not which Marjorie (are we supposed to make a connection with this to “Three-Day Blow”) and he has in fact impregnated another woman named Helen. This is interesting because he never mentions marriage and he seems rather unhappy in the relationship. He may have scorned the waitress since he may be frustrated with the fact that he is in a similar situation with Helen and may blame her for it. I can’t be sure of this though because his marriage to Helen is not clearly stated.

Nick is trying to escape his responsibilities by skiing with George, discussing leaving with George to just ski together all the time, and by trying to drink too much wine. In the end though George has responsibilities of his own that he does not want to escape from (like school) so Nick is left resigned to return home to the States since he has nothing better to do. He is at least looking forward to him and George skiing home together. I thought it was interesting that they did not promise to go skiing again. If the connect with “Three-Day Blow” is correct then maybe he doesn’t want to make a promise because then he will only be disappointed when it doesn’t happen (just like how he thought that he could possibly get back with Marjorie but it in fact did not happen that way). I can understand that feeling because it’s better to be pleasantly surprised than to experience disappointment from building up something that in fact may never happen. 

I read this while in the quiet section of the library after listening to mellow music. I have come to not expect too many happy readings from this class but rather complex feelings and approached the reading as such. I hate the cold but I enjoy skiing so I can understand their joy in the sport but I think the cold is just a lonely and frustrating environment so I overall have mixed feelings (similar to how Nick is feeling?).