Taking flight

Molly Brown snaps the last ski buckle into place, tucks her ginger-brown hair into a wool cap and takes off down the slope at Wintergreen Resort in Nelson County, cutting a smooth S curve into the snow.

The 17-year-old from Amherst is a six-season veteran of the Wintergreen Adaptive Sports Program, a nonprofit corporation that aims to make sports like skiing and snowboarding accessible to people with disabilities.

Brown was born with cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder that limits muscle movement, especially in her lower body.

In her daily life, she moves slowly through the world. She walks with small, deliberate steps, her body hunched into what doctors call a “crouched gait.” Even standing requires thought and effort.

On the ski slopes, Brown is a self-described daredevil. She tackles jumps and moguls with the best of the snowboarders, and cruises down the toughest trails.

“It’s conceivably my favorite thing in the world,” Brown says after a run at Wintergreen on a recent January morning.

Not too long ago, Brown dreaded exercise, which usually came during trips to the doctor’s office.

“Before, all exercise was associated with physical therapy. It was medical. It made me feel weak.”

At the recommendation of an orthopedist, she joined the adaptive ski program and learned to use a mono-ski, a 20-pound sit-down ski that allows her steer with her hips and upper body.

The experience was transformational.

“Suddenly, I am totally master of my own body,” explains Brown.

“It allows you to move with such grace. It’s an incredible thing, the closest you can get to flying.”

Brown, who skipped two years of high school, is on winter break from her first year at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Massachusetts, an early college program for gifted students.

After a morning on the trails, she rests in the adaptive sports trailer, while her mother hunts down a sandwich. Her cheeks are flushed from the cold.

Brown grew up on the grounds of Sweet Briar College in a “house full of bookshelves.” Her parents, Carrie and John Gregory Brown, are novelists and English professors at Sweet Briar.

Brown shares her parents’ love of language. She is mapping out a course of study in creative writing and literature at Bard.

“Writing and reading are my life,” she says.

“I honestly believe language is the most powerful thing in the world.”

In high school, Brown won first place in a poetry contest held by the The Kenyon Review literary magazine. Her poem, “Terra Incognita,” which appeared in the fall 2008 issue, depicts a mythic sea journey and the search for stability in a turbulent world.

Among Brown’s favorite contemporary poets are Kevin Young, a young African American writer who won the 2007 Quill Award for his collection, “For The Confederate Dead,” and Katie Ford, whose recent book of poetry includes first-hand accounts of Hurricane Katrina.

She recites a line by another source of inspiration, Louis Glück, a Pulitzer Prize winner: “At the end of my suffering there was a door.”

Brown says that having cerebral palsy can make her feel like an outsider, especially in a culture that has narrow definitions of what is normal.

“People assume you’re not as intelligent, not as quick-thinking, not as strong,” she says.

“I meet people, and I shake their hand hard. I look people in the eye.” 

Brown embraces her disability. It neither limits nor completely defines her.

“I can do whatever I want to do with my life. I never want to not be disabled,” she says. “It taught me to be an advocate for myself and to develop my own voice.”