From peak to snowy peak, ski areas in Main are pumping out snow and flipping the "on" switch to miles worth of cabled chair lifts.

If you don't know how to ski, it's a good time to learn. I took a lesson myself this past weekend with Perfect Turn ski instructor Johnny Butler at Sunday River in Newry.

There's a gem of a writeup about the experience in this Sunday's Outdoors section, which I promise not to plug. But it's this coming Sunday. In the Maine Sunday Telegram Outdoors section.

It's starts off something like this:

"I'm no novice skier.

I skied once, when I was about 10 years old, on a repurposed landfill.

Mountains make themselves scarce in Illinois, where I grew up. So folks make do. The town had a landfill that had swallowed all it could, so they covered it in dirt and wondered what to do with it. As it happened, the locals were tired of sledding down staircases.

Thus a ski hill was born.

Small by comparison to Maine's skiable mounds, it looked like Everest to me at the time. I loitered at the top for half an hour, until a thoughtful friend sent me off with zero kind words and a hearty shove in the back.

Down I shot, each leg shooting in opposing directions like angry adversaries. My arms swung wide in an attempt to slow myself, stay upright or maybe take flight. I was on a fast track to a very painful tree hugging.

So you see, I did have some skiing experience.

Couple that with a friend's attempt to give me pointers on Shawnee Peak's practice hill two years ago ("Squat like you're hovering on a public toilet," she said) and I was practically an expert."

But learning to ski boasts other rewards, like being able to pose for mountain-top photos that give you the appearance of outdoors mastery and adventure. Sure, I'm frozen with panic atop Sunday River's simplest trail in this photo. But who can tell?

You can take photos with zero sense of irony:

And if you end up with any potentially embarrassing photos of you, a fellow novice and your instructor sprawled on the snow like a trio of deranged , collapsable snow crawlers...well then you can invent some explanation like "this photo was taken following a freak avalanche. It's a blessing we all survived." or "Here's an image capture just after we finished the 45-mile alpine biathlon. We're exhausted, but we took home the gold!"

But truly, skiing is a weapon you can add to your "Keep Winter from Draining your Will to Live" arsenal. Sugarloaf and Sunday River are offering a Ski and Ride packages to encourage new skiers and January is Learn a Snow Sport month in Maine.

Just think, mountain mastery could be yours.

One last thing. Maine Sunday Telegram. Outdoors. This Sunday.