"It changes lives," I remarked to the ski instructor sitting next to me on the chairlift.

"Thank god for the movers and shakers who raise the money to keep this place going," she replied, as we came over the top of the small hill, our chair buffeted by the northwest wind of a January cold front. It was mid-morning, the hill was quiet, and the instructor was trailing six young kids from the Belfast school district at the mountain for the first of their fourth grade learn-to-ski gym classes.

"It's amazing we have six kids who already know how to ski from the school. Usually there are none. It's remarkable how many kids and their families live within 20 miles of this place and have no idea."

As the chairlift dropped over the exit ramp and we skied off in our separate directions I spied one of the hill workers. There was a kid I had known had some typical youthful trouble — now with a paid job on the mountain that clearly was keeping him on the right track, out working in the blistering cold of the January day. During the dark time for him it was the hill and what it offered as a place to expand his talents that he spoke of. It changes lives.

I come from a long line of skiers, as long a line as possible, given the relative youth of the downhill ski industry.

My grandfather, a medical doctor in upstate New York, was one of the founders Mt. Otsego, a small ski area, now defunct, that nevertheless served a community for several long years. My mother and aunt and uncle all learned to ski there, and went on to have full lives in which skiing paid a critical role.

My mother and father met at a lodge that served skiers in Vermont. My mother had made a diversionary stop at the inn — a place she had known from ski trips to Stowe with her parents — on the way to a job interview in Boston that she never made it to.

My father had arrived by train with a buddy to ski, although he was clearly not a skier, according to my mother. They overcame their disparate ski histories and went on to marry and have six children — skiers all, who propagated yet another generation of skiers.

One of the reasons I chose to settle in the Maine coastal town I did is because it hosts a town-owned and -run ski area. My children were on skis from ages two and three, as were many of their cousins. Ski racing became a part of our lives, and the small coastal area here grows great ski racers.

My eldest, once a member of the Maine State High School ski team, and now a grad student in the Midwest, drove back after the holidays with a car full of ski racing gates —donated by our local ski shop, the gates represent her hope to start a ski racing program at the ski area where she is now working on weekends as instructor. Skiing has accompanied this daughter all the years of her life, yielding friendships, jobs, travel, and a sense of strength and identity unattainable elsewhere.

My other child is also a skier, racer. His trajectory, still nascent — and yet framed by skiing. He broke his leg on a distant mountain in eighth grade in a warm-up for a ski race.

That winter found him on the couch more than the hill, and yet he has returned to skiing and racing, his path marked by a tougher kind of victory than the one at the podium. Overcoming falls and rising strong to ski and race again maybe a well-worn metaphor but its truth remains. He is stronger for what he has been through with a deep resilience.

While my mom and dad skied all their married life, when dad's premature death by pancreatic cancer at age 68 left my mom a widow at 61, it was to skiing that she turned. She picked herself up and found new friends to ski with in the hills of upstate New York and the mountains of Europe.

Not content just to free ski, she also then found a ski area in Vermont willing to take her on as a teacher. My mother's first paychecks as an adult were from a ski area, and her voice hooted with joy when you spoke to her about the work she was doing with the adult women she was teaching. It changes lives, and she knew it, she could see it in the improvement from the women who had come to the hill with negative thoughts, the "you'll never ski"s running through their heads, whether real utterances from spouses, siblings, or nay-saying adult children or just ghosts in their head.

The women my mother taught were forever changed. They began to see more possibilities for themselves. The walked a little taller when they took off their ski boots.

The fourth graders who are on my small-town ski hill this morning have been given a gift: Time out in the cold winter air pursuing a new interest, expanding their capacities, seeing a bay of Atlantic Ocean stretch before them — a sight many have not ever seen.

It matters that we have a ski area, one with instructors willing to spend their time with these young people. It matters that we have fundraisers and donors who have helped keep our ski area going. And it matters that we pass along this passion, these pursuits, to get each and every one of us just a little bit beyond our comfort zone.

Molly Mulhern lives and writes in Camden, and skis at the Camden Snow Bowl.