Beautifully Broken

but Breckenridge was incomparable to anywhere I had ever been. The scenery was beautiful, which was one of the main reasons I crashed my monoski. The activity was so cool, but the ski was hard to control and I could hardly take my eyes off of the vista. A monoski is kind of like a single-person bobsled mounted onto one ski, and I used outriggers (handheld poles that had mini skis on the bottom) to lean and control my turns. Unlike with regular skiing, I was going to have to manage my speed by using my core and outriggers to cascade down the mountain. You can’t use the “v-shaped pizza slice” technique when you have only one ski. The monoski was heavy, and if I got going fast enough, those turns became wipeouts. No wipeout would have been as bad as when I almost took out the five-year-olds in the “Tot Ski” class. Those little kids were all lined up following an instructor down one of the steepest parts of the hill, and they were still having to march their feet because they didn’t weigh enough to actually ride their skis down. I felt my momentum gaining as I headed into the higher traffic at the bottom of the hill. I saw an opening that I thought I could squeeze through, but if I pointed my ski down the hill, it would mean possibly crashing into the fence at the bottom. I zigzagged a little more, but the tiny skiers kept inching into my opening. As I was gaining on them, I finally decided to just go for the opening. I zoomed by them with a “Sorry! First timer!” and tried to get my zigzagging back, but it was no use. When I got near the bottom, I just turned the monoski sideways and laid it down, spraying snow everywhere and almost dislodging from my seat. However, no kindergarteners were hurt.

When we weren’t skiing, we were living the lodge life—sipping wine around beautifully crafted stone fireplaces and eating lunch on verandas. The trip was set up so well for people like us trying to find a new normal and still have fun. We had heard that hospital-sponsored trips were so structured that people felt like they spent a week doing communication exercises and talking more about combat than experiencing the location. The Breckenridge trip had a great balance of downtime, ski time, and social time. We actually got to know people on this trip, like Travis and Kelsey Mills. We learned that there were a lot of people at Walter Reed who had served with Travis. We also learned that Travis drank the Kool-Aid of the 82nd Airborne Division, so we got to listen to annoying cadences on the bus ride from the Denver airport to the resort. We had fun picking on each other for choosing the “wrong” side of the Army. Paige was able to chat with Kelsey at the oxygen stations at the resort while the two of them tried recovering from altitude headaches. Travis was another quadruple amputee that I had seen in the MATC before. I wondered how he would do on this trip, but that question was quickly answered after I had my fifth wipeout of the day and Travis came cruising by me on a snowboard with no arms and no legs. Following up two solo trips with learning a new sport made me think that not only were we on the road to recovery, but we might actually plan things like this for ourselves one day. We could go on vacations and find ways to do normal things. We weren’t going to think about going places or trying new things just to be filled with fear and doubt that we probably couldn’t handle it. Breckenridge opened our eyes to the future, and we spent time daydreaming of the places we would go.

PAIGE

I felt liberated when we came back from Colorado. I was under the weather the whole trip, but the scenery was not going to keep me inside. It blew my mind that the first time Josh had ever tried skiing was after he had lost both of his legs. I was so proud to see Josh enjoy a nonessential activity. We had great physical therapists who tried to offer rehabilitation in fun environments. Walking wasn’t so bad when it took place at a ballpark. Video games might have seemed unnecessary, but they were a great way for him to get occupational therapy for his hand. Skiing was not an essential skill for an amputee, but it was fun for both of us. As a planner, achiever, and caregiver, I felt like my role thus far had been to find the purpose in everything we did. If it wasn’t necessary, why were we doing it? If it was necessary, then what was taking so long? I remember sitting by a firepit, looking around at all of our friends, and thinking… Having fun is one of the most crucial forms of rehabilitation. It is so hard for them to do even the simplest of things. All of them deserve to have fun, because it’s an essential part of healing, not because they need to achieve something. For the first time since we had gotten to Walter Reed, there was no pressure to accomplish anything. If we wanted to sleep in, we did. If we wanted to lie around and eat all day, we did. If we wanted to ski until we felt like Jell-O, we did. I was so excited that Josh enjoyed the trip because the monoskiing looked really hard. It made me feel like going to the beach or maybe exploring the outdoors was within our reach. I was thankful for trips like this, because I never in a million years would have suggested skiing as an activity for an amputee. But the combination of adaptive sports engineers and Josh’s love for fast-paced danger created something he stuck with for