The Phantom Skier
My husband and I traveled to Park City, Utah for a skiing vacation with old friends. Famous for its world class skiing and scenery, the lift deposits you on top of a mountain that is 10,000 feet above sea level. You can only imagine the view on a made for Hollywood day of towering mountains, brilliant sunshine, and bright blue sky. It was one of those days when I was just so thankful to be alive.
I was so excited to get started. The run down the mountain would take anywhere from 15-25 minutes, depending on how many times our group would stop to rest and reassemble. I’m a competent skier, but also the least experienced among our group of four. My companions had made a swift descent on the first leg of the downhill and had paused on a shelf to wait for me before shoving off for the next segment.
I had just stopped after catching up with them…when out of nowhere a lone skier came barreling down the slope right at me. My friends described his speed as incredible…perhaps not as fast as 90 miles per hour Olympic downhillers, but not far from it. I had no time to brace for the violent train wreck about to unfold as a tangle of broken bones and maybe worse went hurtling down the mountainside.
My party was watching as the collision scene unfolded. Nothing they could do, as he had appeared so quickly. The speedster was right at my back at one moment and at the next….he continued to glide effortlessly down the slope. Given his speed and proximity to my back, there was just no way he could have avoided running right over me.
All of us were astounded and in a state of what I’d call “grateful disbelief.” We couldn’t get over what we were seeing with our own eyes. His ski tracks in the snow ended just behind me. The ski tracks mysteriously picked up again right in front of me! There were no ski tracks going to the side or around me, and I was unscathed.
We tried to piece it together. What had just happened? He was going so fast he passed by in a flash, yet what we all saw was unmistakable. Here I stood, squarely in the middle of his tracks that stopped right behind me and resumed right in front of me….yet no collision!
We brainstormed explanations and nothing seemed to fit. How did he navigate around my space….as over, under or through my space does’t work in our world. We found no satisfactory answer, save this one. We concluded that this most certainly was a miracle of God, and I continue to give thanks for his abiding protection wherever he sends me.