Sometimes, to fully express something as magnificent and graceful as a Wasatch Winter — with its endless elegant curves — it’s not enough to exaggerate, you must over-exaggerate.

I love snow! I love the pine trees’ blue shadows falling across it. I love how the new-fallen snow can make a jagged mountain look like a sack of potatoes overlaid with fondant. And there are few things more splendid than spending an entire winter day outside, if for nothing else than to watch the changing of the light on the snow, from the rufous pink of first light, strengthening to the brightness of kleig lights at noon, fading back to snow-shadow blue when the lifts close, to soft, Zinfandel pink as the sun sets.

I want to stand at a window and watch it falling from a high penthouse in New York. And from a Chamonix bistro. And a Solitude Jacuzzi.

I want to be there — maybe a yurt in the Uintas, or a chalet in Big Cottonwood Canyon — chopping wood on the front deck of a cabin on a chilly November evening when the season’s first snowflakes — big as muzzleloader patches, light as bubbles — start falling. I want to be snowed-in in Snowbird (easy enough!) with nothing to do but read Patrick O’Brian novels, and, of course, from the balcony window watch it snow, snow, snow!

And I love playing in snow. I want to open the flap of a tent in Mongolia and see our skinned skis standing there, ready for the day’s trek. I want to watch the Northern Lights — from a slit in my hood — shimmer before me like a psychedelic curtain as the sled dogs mush ever northward. I want to snowshoe through it while it falls so thickly around us that every landmark, every feature beyond 40 feet is hidden behind its cloak, forced to follow the “bread crumbs” on Jeff’s GPS to find our way back to the car.

But, that — some of that — would come later in the winter. But that day, from the fourth floor window of Salt Lake’s downtown library, I watched the dark, dense snow clouds rolling in from British Columbia via Idaho. The undersides of the storm clouds, already heavy and stretched to breaking, dragged across the Great Salt Lake like the belly of a 10-pound cutthroat dragging across a Strawberry gravel bar, gathering even more fuel as they passed over the Great Salt Lake.

The storm cloud was heavy as a bag of groceries that’s overstuffed with a gallon of milk, and a tin can of peaches, its flimsy handles stretching and lengthening in your hands, the bottom bulging, the seam weakening. It was the old bottle, filled with new wine. It was the belly 37 weeks pregnant.

The plastic bag, already stretched to its limit, needs only the slightest bump against your leg and the seam will split and the milk and peaches will come tumbling out. The wine needs only the slightest shake to make the bottle explode. The woman with the pregnant belly needs only to vacuum the floor to start the contractions. And the dark, heavy, belly-dragging snow clouds need only the puncturing teeth of the Wasatch Mountains.

For the last three weeks you’ve been reading about my attempts at teaching myself to ski at the age of 43. I know, it seems a little late in the game to be teaching such a new trick to such an old dog, but for the last year I have had a growing desire to ski. It’s been building in me like the black snow cloud grew as it passed over the Great Salt Lake. It all started — my growing desire to ski — in the winter of 2011-12 when I took a part-time job driving a ski shuttle from the airport to the ski resorts.

As I drove my passengers from the airport to the ski resorts they were so excited for their week of skiing. They talked about the snow conditions, speculated if the mountains would get more snow. They asked each other about what kind of skis they had, where they were coming from. And on the way back to the airport, after they’d spent a week skiing, they talked about how epic the snow was, how uncrowded the slopes were, how short the lift lines were.

All winter long I pulled my 10-passenger van up to the airport curb, and boarded people who have traveled from all around the world to ski Alta, Snowbird, Solitude, Brighton and the Park City resorts. I was most amazed when people from Austria, Switzerland or France got in my van. These are people who could have much more easily spent their ski vacation in Chamonix, Saalbech and Grindenwald. But it happened so often — skiers arriving from Austria, Switzerland and France — that I was no longer amazed when they boarded my shuttle.

One night I picked up four Austrians on their way to the Alta Peruvian. They could have driven to Galtar, Kitzbuhel or Saalbech (all Austrian resorts) in a matter of hours. Or they could have flown to France’s Tignes, St. Martin-de-Belleville, or the famous Chamonix in but a few hours. They could have flown to Switzerland and skied St. Moritz, Grindenwald or the Matterhorn’s Zermatt, and again, been there in less time than it would take me to drive from Salt Lake to Spanish Fork.

But no. Instead they’d been on an airplane bound for Utah for 18 hours so they could spend a week at Alta.

“Don’t you have some of the world’s best skiing right in your backyard?” I asked them. And, of course, they agreed that the skiing there is wonderful but they’d invariably add something like, “But zere is nothing bettair zan Utah powdair!”

It wasn’t just what he said, but how he said it. His sentence was cupped in wistfulness, and cradled in nostalgia. He said it with the same longing sigh of a homesick missionary telling his companion about his hometown.

And that was it! Eight weeks of transporting fervent skiers to the slopes, and bringing satisfied-yet-melancholy skiers back from the slopes was like the snow cloud building over the Great Salt Lake, and the wistful sentence uttered by a passionate Austrian who had traveled thousands of miles to ski Alta, was the teeth of the Wasatch that tore the cloud open.

I was going to learn how to ski! I wanted to experience Epic Powder and gnarly groomers. I wanted to stand in public places and unabashedly say things like, “I’m praying for a big dump.”

I wanted to experience the gracefulness of skiing. Everything about it is smooth and graceful. Every curve, every arc, every cross-section of the cone — parabolae, hyperbolae, ellipses — is represented on a ski hill. You’ll see them in the fluid movements of the skiers as they slalom down the hill. You’ll see them again in the cut and shape of the skis. A ski is really just a melding of parabolas and hyperbolas.

Even the rugged mountain is made graceful under the softening effects of 60 inches of Wasatch’s finest. Snow is the English Wheel that rounds out the hill’s sharp edges. It smooths a sharp-edged bluff or ravine into the graceful contours of a shield, or a wind-filled sail. I love that a billion tiny hexagons, massed together, can form something so smooth.

OK, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going skiing. I mean, I’m 43 years old. I’m a native Utahn. It’s time I did this.

There were certain aspects of skiing that I felt like I’d be really good at: Drinking cocoa in front of a crackling fire in the lodge? Certainly. Apres ski? I’m a natural, baby. And there were some aspects of it that I felt like I’d struggle with: Paying $7 for a hot dog? Yikes! Making conversation with a beautiful woman while we rode the chairlift together? Terrifying!

I knew I was inviting the Trojan Horse inside my gates, and I knew that once it was inside something was going to jump out. What I didn’t know was what that might be. Given my love of winter, I was pretty confident it would contain the ecstasy of spending a beautiful day on a snow-covered slope, and the unparalleled joy of trying something new. And I knew there would be some pain, some humiliation. But something tragic might jump out of that Trojan Horse too. Maybe a broken neck or snapped ACL.

Whatevs. Taking risks is nothing new to me. Check this out: On several occasions I have driven my car more than 5,000 miles without changing my oil. I’ve shut down my computer without backing up my document on an external drive. I’ve ridden my bike without wearing a helmet. Sometimes I go to bed without flossing first. I’ve eaten Pop-Tarts that were past their expiration date, and, this one time I went swimming without waiting for a half hour after eating. So I said crashes, humiliation, injuries, $7 hotdogs: Bring it on!

And I did it. I went skiing! And it was rough at first with the crashing and embarrassing moments. And, yeah, I acquired some aches and bruises. But some happy stories, too. And just as a storm of tiny snowflakes covers and smooths out the rough terrain of a mountain, my rough moments were smoothed out and softened by a storm of small successes and the beautiful hours spent out in nature. I felt the confidence that grows from the successful application of courage, the primal satisfaction of trying a new thing, and the deeper satisfaction of succeeding at it. I felt the joy of having my curiosity rewarded when I got to witness beautiful natural scenes unfold right in front of me, and thrilling runs down the slope, followed by a contemplative journey through the sky on the chairlift.

Some emotions of failure and success poured over me like an avalanche, but most of my favorite moments of teaching myself to ski were as small and miraculous as a snowflake.