Skate Break

This week we took a beautiful break in the middle of the day to go skate around Lake Morey.

Going ice skating here ranks pretty high on our family's list of winter priorities. One reason is the skates. Here, we've discovered nordic skates. I used to use figure skates. I was timid, afraid to fall, and I couldn't wait to get them off and feel firm ground again. But nordic skates consist of a long blade that attaches hinge-like onto the front of our cross-country ski boots, leaving the heel free to lift up. I feel so much more stable with these skates; I don't "feel" rough ice as much, and can usually just skate through the bumps. They're also more comfortable. W used to complain of his feet hurting in hockey skates, but has come to like skating a lot more since he started using these.

The other reason the skating here gets us stoked is they plow a path on this lake that they say is 4.5 miles around. I find it really exciting to be on the open lake with trail stretching far ahead, mountains around, and to really go somewhere on skates. It is an incredible feeling to get a rhythm going and imagine oneself a speed skater, bent over, arms swaying this way and that. We can do this loop in a little less than an hour, but I see many skaters there who do it much faster.  Skating like this is its own special sport.

And yet, ice skating is very weather dependent. Besides the magical combination of weather that makes for smooth ice, cold temperatures are best so they ice doesn't get soft and marked up. There is a relatively brief window of time for skating each year. We've learned to seize the day and forego other winter activities when we hear the ice is good.

The day we went last week perfect-- not yet ten degrees when we arrived. We layered up and knew that once we got moving we wouldn't be cold at all. W and I walked down to the edge of the lake, clipped on our blades, and skated the big loop around, pausing occasionally to rest simply by standing up straight for a moment. There were a few bumpy sections here and there but huge swaths that were super smooth. W, who is often a bit ahead of me, would double back to come tell me the ice was great and say, "Watch this" as he took off.

Sure, I did feel a little conspicuous as to whether the three other folks we passed while skating around the trail in the middle of a Tuesday wondered why this kid wasn't in school. I certainly wasn't ice skating in order to teach physics. (Though similarly, cooking involved bits of reading, math, and science, but that isn't why I found it so worthwhile. And I certainly didn't pretend we went on hikes this fall for the purpose of using map skills, though we used them.) But we'll both remember our skate break last week because of the rosy cheeks and fresh air that was in our lungs the rest of the day, for the awesome one-on-one time outside of our usual routine, and because we grabbed a beautiful opportunity rather than letting it pass by.