Ice Skating

 

I have loved ice skating for many years. I skated as a child for many years to and through my seventies. Winter meant skating. Skating was and is fun and good exercise. It also includes falls and bruises but I always thought they were just part of skating.

When we were small our father took my brothers and me ice skating when we lived in Lincolnwood, Illinois, somewhere near our home. We had our own skates and slid around until we got tired. That was the beginning of my love affair with this winter activity. We also did some skating on Clark’s Lake near our Door County cottage before we lived in Wisconsin. Skating on a lake that was bumpy and barely plowed was work but it was wonderful to be out on this lake in the woods.  Cold weather didn’t stop us as we raced around on our large-enough icy spot.

After our family moved to Sturgeon Bay when I was ten years old, we had the market square. It was a half block size parking lot that was between our school and the fire department garage. The kids and I sped around on our skates during those short snowy days after school and on weekends. We bundled up in our skates, winter coats, stocking hats and warm mittens, and every now and then warmed up in the warming house. That space is still there today but it no longer is a skating rink. It outlasted our school building that moved to other locations.

I remember playing crack the whip on the market square with a bunch of girls about my age. We held hands in a line and skated in a circular pattern, with one girl at one end swinging the line of girls until the girl at the other end was speeding around. Sooner or later the kids let go and the one at the far end went sailing across the rink and often fell. That happened to me once and I ended up flat on the ice with a bloody chin. I got up and skated again.

I grew up, moved to Green Bay, and had kids. Husband Rick was not a skater. The rest of us enjoyed a large rink at Astor Park in Green Bay. I drove us there whenever we had time. We put on our skates and joined the many kids and a few moms. The kids skated with little need for adult help.

At Astor Park I was delighted to see that Joyce, a mom I knew, was skating around the rink and teaching the kids there to figure skate. This good skater showed them some easy steps and moves. I think my Mary and Libby joined them. I watched the impromptu performances while I skated around holding hands with little Sarah. John said “no, thanks” and skated by himself.

Time went by. The kids grew up. Rick and I moved to Madison. I was still ice skating, this time at Elver Park, wearing knee pads and wrist pads to soften the falls. While I skated, some neighborhood kids there saw me and said things like, “Look, someone’s grandma is skating.” By that time I was past age sixty but still loved being on the ice. Unfortunately, in my seventies my balance became unsteady. The problem was getting back up. On a few occasions son John was skating and helped me get up after falling.

Finally I gave it up.

Long Cold Winter?

This winter has been long, cold and snowy. More snow is expected tonight and tomorrow. Everywhere I have heard people complain about how bad it is. But is it really? I suggest that we are fortunate to live through the winter with the amenities that technology has given us. We have electricity for light in the long cold nights, various types of fuel to heat our homes against the harsh cold, indoor plumbing for necessary bodily functions, cars to drive through the well plowed roads to our chosen destinations.

Many of us can recall some depictions of winter in other times when people lived without the comforts we have. We read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book, The Long Winter, about the Ingalls family barely surviving in the Dakota Territory in the 1800s. They stayed in their rural home in bitter cold with little food for the long winter. And they survived to live on in better days. The book, Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak, told of harsh winters in Moscow and the Urals in the early days of the Russian revolution. I read the book and remember the movie, in which the wolves howled outside near Zhivago and Tonia while they nestled under blankets for warmth, and Zhivago and Lara while they huddled close to the heating stove where they wouldn’t freeze. That was winter! The movie industry showed it well.

Winter is described with great intensity in the well known poem, Snowbound, by John Greenleaf Whittier (http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/whitt02.html). In our family, when our kids were young, Rick quoted it every time we had a snowstorm:

“The sun that brief December day

Rose cheerless over hills of gray.

And, darkly circled, gave at noon

A sadder light than waning moon.”

That wasn’t all. Rick would call up the stairs to John and the girls, again quoting Whittier’s poem:

 “A prompt, decisive man, no breath

Our father wasted: ‘Boys, a path!”

It was time to shovel the driveway and sidewalk.

As far as I know, this winter, while long and cold, has not been memorialized in literature, although it has dominated television news. The Ingalls family, Zhivago, and Whittier did not have television to show us what winter is like at its worst. They told us what it was like to live with it. We are living with it in greater comfort. We can stop complaining now.

A Walk in the Snow

Blue sky and forty degrees today. That meant go out into the snow. The Ice Age Trail is beautiful in winter, beautiful in summer, and slushily beautiful when weather is above freezing in February. I am fortunate to have a segment of the trail on county highway PD near my home.

I was prepared for several scenarios. I took snowshoes, two pairs of boots, and one pair of walking shoes. Also one jacket that proved to be too warm. One look at the parking lot and the trail suggested that I leave the snowshoes in the car. Not enough snow. Too much snow to go without boots.

Trudging up and down hills in slush is work. It also is invigorating. Right away I saw a beautiful springer spaniel walking a man. Then, when farther uphill, I looked over the panorama of city development that is very near the trail, but far away enough to not interfere with the rural character. A small woods provided some variety. Since I didn’t want to slide downhill at the far end of the woods, I turned around and reversed my direction. I walked until the winter coat seemed superfluous. As I said, walking in slush is work.

The high grasses on the fields manifest a great number of colors; some are golden, some are more brown or more gray. It’s winter beauty that often goes unseen. Who cares about grass, especially when it is three feet tall? Apparently I do. The snow is heavy and white, with gray slush. In some places the ground is evident. That’s winter in all its variety and wonderfulness.

You don’t know what the Ice Age Trail is? Go to your favorite search engine and type Ice Age Trail and Wisconsin. Or try this: dnr.wi.gov/org/land/parks/specific/iceagetrail/. The trail is part of a national trail system, with many segments in Wisconsin.