It's February, and I'm sneaking a pair of skates and a Sherwood
into the trunk of my dad's car. Snow flurries paint the driveway
and frost the leafless maple trees in the front yard. I'm in between
jobs, and I stare at the flakes twisting earthward, wishing this
natural scene would help me gain some insight into the order of
things. But this longing recedes when I blink and remember more
immediate plans.
I've inveigled my parents into driving to Lake Placid for the
afternoon. I could drive myself, but I think I want company, or
an audience -- I'm not sure why. Far as they know, it's strictly
a sightseeing trip: drive up, watch some ice-climbers, see if
there's any activity at the ski-jumps, have lunch, return to the
cozy warmth of home. Far as I'm concerned, they don't need to
know my plan to make an additional stop, just before Lake Placid,
at the place where Cascade Brook widens into a lake. I'm not sneaking
my skates and stick into the trunk for ballast. I'm hoping the
pond is frozen as even and smooth as the marble floor of a bank.
I want to see eight or so people flipping pucks and swirling on
the ice like sharks, waiting for a game to start, for feeding
time. I'll play hockey again, on natural ice, even though my legs
and skills aren't what they used to be.
* * *
Pond hockey has few rules, if any. There are no icings or offsides
and there are no real positions. In "real" hockey, there is something
called a "defensive defenseman." There is another thing called
a "defensive forward." In pond hockey, there is a position called
"rover." Everyone plays this position. A rover's job is to chase
the puck wherever it goes.
In an age of specialization -- when job titles are so long they
often spill onto the backs of business cards, when the average
coffee order makes War and Peace seem like a pamphlet
-- this generality is refreshing, especially for people like me
who tend to feel a little cornered by the lack of simplicity in
the world.
Five years ago, after the last game of my unspectacular freshman
collegiate season, I gave up playing "real" hockey, and I continue
to cope with a curious symptom of withdrawal. As Odysseus probably
imagined every distant sight of land to be his beloved Ithaca,
I imagine every body of water as if it were frozen. When shaving,
the sink fills with foamy water and tiny black hairs and I think:
If I were small enough. . . . Last July I saw a pond
in Iowa shaped like a huge kidney, smack in the middle of a cornfield.
Imagine a game on that pond in the dead of winter! Pulling the
tractors over and turning on the headlights so we can play into
the evening. Of course, hell will freeze over before I visit the
Hawkeye state in the winter. Which makes me think: The hockey
games in hell would be rough, but there would be no shortage of
referees.
I miss the organized game, but I find that pond hockey -- with
all its possibility, its lack of rules -- suits me just fine.
It's a game of swiftness, creativity, "natural" opponents (the
branches that freeze sticking out of the ice), cold feet and freedom.
* * *
My dad, a lifelong resident of upstate New York, puffs out his
chest and curls up the side of his mouth condescendingly as he
ambles toward the car. He prides himself in being able to travel
in any weather without the benefit of four-wheel drive. I can't
tell if he is scoffing at the weather or if he caught me shoving
a puck into my jacket pocket. We back out of the driveway and
point ourselves north.
When we reach Keene, we can see some of the Adirondack High
Peaks out the window; they have rounded tops and wear white chapeaus.
Geologists say the Adirondack Mountains owe their visages to ice
that receded at the end of the Earth's most recent glacial episode,
12,000 or so years ago. For many years, scientists were puzzled
by the ability of glaciers to slide down mountains. Gravity, sure.
But why is ice slippery?
When considering the analogous problem of how skaters skate,
the prevailing theory was that the pressure of the blades provided
just-in-time melting as the skater glided along. This theory held
up reasonably well for skates. But for skis, instruments that
spread a human's weight over a larger area and thus exerted less
pressure on the snow, and for glaciers, which distributed their
weight over a huge area, the theory explaining the slipperiness
of frozen water was suspect.
About 25 years ago, a group of researchers at Berkeley was using
a technique called Low Energy Electron Diffraction (LEED) to bounce
electrons off ice and measure molecular spacing and orientation.
I get the feeling this sort of thing goes on all the time at Berkeley,
and I do not think it my place to question their motives. To the
researchers' consternation, half the hydrogen bonds were missing
in the molecules on the surface layer of ice. They hypothesized
that the bonds were there; they were just attached to oxygen molecules
vibrating faster than their counterparts in the layers below.
The result of these vibrating molecules is a thin surface layer
of matter that is not quite water and not quite ice. Over the
past 20 years, scientists have surmised that this layer of vibrating
molecules, called the quasi-liquid layer, exists for ice at temperatures
all the way down to minus-180 or so degrees Celsius. It is this
layer that allows skaters to skate, skiers to ski and glaciers
to flow down mountainsides.
Scientists can now skate and ski with clearer consciences, no
longer forced to make a square theory fit in a round hole. But,
qua scientists, they did not let the quasi-liquid layer
lie. Thoughts and experiments turned toward ice crystals in the
Earth's atmosphere. Many hypothesize that the unique chemical
composition of the quasi-liquid layer, its bond characteristics
somewhere between those found in ice and those found in water,
may catalyze certain other chemical reactions. In the atmosphere,
quasi-liquid probably helps peel chlorine off chlorofluorocarbon
molecules. Scientists are reasonably sure that free chlorine breaks
down O3, commonly referred to as ozone. Following the
logic leads to a conclusion: The closer we get to requiring triple-digit
SPF sunscreen for trips to the beach, the more relevant the study
of this quasi-liquid layer becomes. And the message seems fairly
clear: When you're pondering questions big or small, lace up your
skates and push a puck around the ice. Something might just come
to you.
But there's even more to it than that. Humans are uncomfortable
with in-betweens in this age of specialization. Those who read
Homer aren't often encouraged to also examine, say, the chemistry
of ice. Choose one or the other. But ice, whose most important
aspect is the inbetween-ness of its surface, relies on the transition
zone in order to do its best work. Ice is successful in a state
of flux, in a constant state of choosing between two states.
These are the thoughts I'm twisting around in my brain as we
approach the Cascade Lakes. Rounding a corner, I innocently clear
my throat.
"Hey Dad, lemme check out the pond?"
"You have your skates?" he asks.
"They might be in the trunk," I say.
He and my mother share a look, but we pull over and park.
Sometimes generosity from your parents comes exactly when you
need it. My father used to tie my skates in the car on the way
to the rink. I remember sitting in the back seat and pushing my
foot up near the gearshift so he could pull on the laces at red
lights. When we arrived at the rink he would carry me inside,
so the concrete wouldn't ruin my blades, and give me an encouraging
tap on my shoulder as I stepped onto the ice. My jersey was down
to my knees I was so small.
This time I'm sitting on a snow bank, wincing as I pull on my
own laces. A biting wind colors my fingers red and numbs them.
Pushing out a few times onto the frozen lake, I look out over
its smooth and empty surface. The wind whips up swirls of snow,
and I'm alone in the cold -- but that's okay.
I reach into my pocket and drop the puck at my feet. Evergreen
spectators, bowing their heads under burdens of snow, watch me
glumly from the slopes above the lake. My eyes sting in the arctic
wind. The blades of my Bauers make that wondrous scraping sound
of steel on ice as they float on the quasi-liquid layer, the lubricious
stuff of constant instability, the substrate of my life.
Since I'm alone, I have time to reflect while I carve wide turns.
I don't remember any specific day when I changed from the son
whose father ties his skates into what I am now. Certainly this
didn't happen overnight. I suppose it happens over time by means
of a million small, nearly imperceptible, increments. No wonder
I find myself always occupying space between some metaphysical
here and there. And these intermediate spaces are not insignificant,
I'm learning -- especially if you happen to be ice skating. Like
many of us, ice derives its strength from its depth and its effectiveness
in transition. Ice teaches us things. And ice is slippery, for
balance.
On the bank, I see another car nudging itself into a parking
space. Three forms jump out holding sticks and skates. There will
be a game soon. And even the machinations of a contemplative mind
will not prevent me from chasing the puck wherever it goes.
Tim McNamara is a writer. He lives with his wife, Heather, in
Ocean Beach, just west of downtown San Diego.
(April 2005)
