The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 91

THE BOSTON GLOBE THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1995 91 to sM Some families head for hills on holiday By Tony Chamberlain GLOBE STAFF erry Harrison, a 24-year-old research assistant in economics for if-; a Washington think tank, is counting the hours. Last Tuesday the lawns outside his office window 1" 1 i 1 1 St -i Af were still brownish and bare, and as a native New England skier who hasn't been on the slopes for two years, reading about all the Northeast snow "really has my mind on the North country as I sit here in the office," he says. "I'm pumped." I Just as soon as he can get a flight, Harrison will be heading this way, and at 8:30 Monday morning he hopes to be celebrating Christmas by taking the milk run down Sunday River with family and a group of old friends he grew up skiing with. I "That's all I want for Christmas," Harrison says. "To be outdoors in mountains full of snow, with people I love.

That's Christmas." Over in Jackson, N.H., more than a dozen families staying at the Christmas Farm Inn will be heading off to downhill areas on Christmas morning, or donning cross-country gear for an energetic trek around the trails of the Jackson Foundation. And at Stratton, Rob and Paige Boyer will have two grandchildren, ages 4 and 5, trying out their ski legs for the very first time this Christmas morning. "They're not talking about presents under the tree or lots of toys or any of that," says Grandma Paige, a 56-year-old who began skiing in college and has never missed a winter. "They've always lived in California and they've never seen snow. That's what they're going to remember about this Christmas snow." Skiing on Christmas morning may not be everyone, though that in itself makes it an exceptionally good day to hit the slopes, crowd free.

') Throughout snow country there is a steadfast group of skiers who consider first tracks Christmas morning as much a tradition as holly sprigs and reindeer on the condo roof. "What's great about having Christmas week and the holiday right here," says Paige Boyer, "is that you get the richness of the season but in real peace. It's the closest thing to a Currier and Ives Christmas you can have without actually being a native of rural Vermont in the last century." Most folks who opt for the mountain Christmas echo this sentiment: The shopping choices are as limited as the auto travel; there is less emphasis on the commercial aspect of the season than on its natural beauty; nearly everyone you run into is a kindred spirit, giving the holiday a strong sense of community, however transient it may be. "When we first went skiing at Christmas, it seemed like we were leaving home," says Josh Lane, 22, whose now-traditional family GLOBE PHOTO OAVID BRUNEAU For some families, it has become an annual tradition to spend Christinas Day together on a ski slope. trip to Stowe for Christmas Day includes a predawn run.

"How it started is one Christmas my sister Kristen and I were bugging my parents about 5 a.m. They told us it was too early and to find something to do. So I think we found some new skis Santa had left under the tree, and we got our stuff on and walked up the novice slope in the dark. "After a while Mom and Dad got worried because the condo was so quiet, and they came looking for us. After they got over being mad at us, they joined us, walking up and taking a few runs.

So now it's just one of those family rituals." For Terry Harrison, this Christmas at Sunday River will be the rekindling of an old ritual begun when his and two other families would spend holidays together skiing. But as kids went away to college and two of the families moved, those Christmas seasons on the slopes became a fond memory. Until this capacity with all our condo units." And at Okemo, like nearly everyplace else, skiing is at 100 percent for the first time in many Christmases all trails, all lifts, all off-piste glade runs. "I can't remember conditions this good this early ever," says Gary Kaidasch up at Stowe, where the Christmas scene is a backdrop from the mountains to the town of Stowe a few miles down the access road. "You know how old-timers are always talking about how they remember Christmases with snow piled up over their heads? That's what it's like here this year," says Kaidasch.

In the time since Bill and Sydna Zeliff bought the Christmas Farm Inn 20 years ago, they have seen just about every face of winter, the good and the bad. And for an inn keeper high in ski country of the Mt. Washington Valley, last year's snowless Christmas was, in Sydna's words, "one of our saddest." But this year, just the same, the inn is booked solid through New Years, and the staff is getting cranked up like a football team about to play an important game. "Everyone enjoys the Christmas week here," says Sydna Zeliff. "And with all the snow this year, everybody on the staff is really excited." Over their two decades, the Zeliffs have worked hard to create the holiday magic that just seems to flow naturally with the atmosphere of the inn.

On Christmas Eve, the inn throws a party for its 75 guests and opens it up to village folks, who come wassailing and carol singing before Santa recites "The Night Before Christmas" and passes out gifts to all the children, by name. "Then, at midnight, there's a nondenominational church service down in NORTHEAST SKIING, Page 93 year. "Everyone wanted to come home and have Christmas the way it used to be," says Harrison. "But since we all live in different places, home this year became any mountain where all of us are there skiing together again." Christmas morning is usually quiet and unhurried across ski country. "It's not one of our biggest days," says Stratton spokesperson Myra Foster.

"In the afternoon, things start to pick up. A lot of new skis and snowboards show up." Just up Route 100 at Okemo, mountain spokesperson Pam Cruckshank reports that crowd beaters who like to head for ski country on school vacations will come up today or tomorrow through Monday, then head home as the really big crowds gather for the rest of the week. "We're booked solid for Christmas week," says Cruckshank. "We'll be at "How silently, Iww silently The wondrous gift, is giv'n," now, that is. We are talking about snow games.

Snow is no miracle if you happen to live i north or west of our near-Cape coastal town. Here the blessings of the Atlantic Ocean We all love snow games Some take time to play; others seize chance to panic day, when we awoke to enough real sticking snow to -get out the old cross-country skis for the first time this season. It was time to put the local golf course to worthwhile use, and, just as simple as putting on shoes themselves, we were off across the white expanse toward the far woods. The pleasures of cross-country skiing are a little hard to describe, partly because the whole activity is so simple: get on the snow, click into the skis, move the arms and legs and off you go. Nordic skiing is almost as simple as walking, yet it -is not walking, nor even snowshoeing.

Once you're a birkenbienber birch legs the movement changes. As the foot slides ahead, then glides, the friction created melts a skein of snow underneath the ski so that one's walking motion enters an entirely new dimension. But so simple! The same energy it takes to walk squirts the skier along at twice the speed of a walk, with the possibility of speed closer to that of a bicyclist. The real magic of cross-country skiing is the minimalist's dream so much fun for so little cost and effort. And so we inspected last weekend's snowstorm, over the golf course and through woods made fresh and new by a festive powdering of white.

That's my kind of snow game, though all the storm talk on Tuesday did get me out back with a splitting mall, stacking up some dry oak to burn. Who knows how long we'd be stranded with nothing but a wood fire keeping us alive? That's a pretty good snow game, too. turn things cold and clammy in summer, warm and clammy in winter, such that two of life's hazards -snowballs and sunburn rarely trouble us in any long-term sort of way. As a rule, though, not much falls from the sky around my way that does not eventually turn to rain. But there it was just the other Sunday morning: bright and white, deep and dry, and still coming down white and luscious snow.

Now, I recognize that not everyone considers snow exactly a gift from above. In fact, the mere hint of a big dump in these parts sends the legions of dooms-dayers to the Stop Shop to stock up on milk by the gallons, candles by the dozens, bread and veggies, giant cans of stew, crates of eggs, fruit juice cartload after cartload of stuff hoarded back to suburban caves, stockpile for some unknown duration. Might be weeks, after all. Stuek out there in the tundra of Candlewick Close or Foxtail Run before help can break through Usually it's more like 3'2 hours before that most powerful of all earth forces kids' boredom blazes a trail straight to the video store and pizza shop. So much for the romantic pleasures of being snowbound.

grimness. And forecasters overstate everything. Anyway, know what I think? I think the doomsdayers stocking up on candles, batteries and Chips Ahoys are engaged in their own kind of snow game. Just loving it. As surely as kids bust with excitement to go sledding down a hill, the doomsdayers love wheeling those 200-pound cartloads into the supermarket checkout line and sharing scare stories about what lies ahead.

"No way this one's going to miss us this time," burbles one bebooted doomsdayer to another. "This one's going to blanket the whole East Coast." "Yup," says the other, her cartload underlined with 8 gallons of fresh water to take her through January in case help never arrives. "They're saying a good 2 feet." Well, by now, we all know what happened another storm whimpering out in a few soggy inches tending towards rain. Anyway, we began this by talking about last Sun- I was doomsdayer-watching just the other day as THE STORM OF THE CENTURY: NOR'EASTER '95 was about to descend, followed by BRIDE OF NOR'EASTER 95, snuffing out civilization as we know it. (Of course, it was to be another semi-blown forecast, but, ho-hum, how many times can you kvekh about a theme that has no variations?) Anyway, there they were, the doomsdayers, in the Stop Shop at 8 a.m., dressed like Everest expedi-tioners, though it was hours before the first flake would fall.

Standing in line checking through mountains of provisions each Doomsdayer having wheeled up enough stuff to feed an Afghanistan village for a month they swapped tales, not of storms past but of storms imjxnding. Because the real truth is, there has been only one debilitating blizzard around these parts in the last third of a century, and most storms seem to hit with a severity inversely proportional to the forecasters' jf-.