I lay sprawled on my stomach on a rubber mat spread across the snow, my knees bent, the toes of my boots still locked into my cross-country skis. Fifty meters away, a series of five circles that looked like Oreo cookies loomed against a white background. Then, for the first time ever, I fired a gun: a .22-caliber rifle. I hit the target and the Oreo turned white, as if it had been swallowed whole.
On a cold, sunny Saturday in January, I had come to Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in Midway, Utah, to learn about biathlon, a hybrid of cross-country skiing and target shooting that originated in Scandinavia, where people have long hunted game on skis.