For many long adult years, winter was for me something to endure,
a time of occasional beauty but mostly gloom, slush, slippery
driving and shoveling. Ice was a dreaded matter, something to
sprinkle salt on, unless the frozen matter was in a glass. Then
we moved from the cramped ravines of coastal Connecticut to the
mountains of central Montana. Winters there are assuredly longer
and stronger, colder and bolder but also filled with a bracing
beauty that at times overwhelms. And sunshine. In the capital
of Helena the sun shines way more than 300 days a year. It might
be 10 below zero, but most days will be sunglass sunny.
There, our little boy took up ice hockey. One day as a dutiful
dad with Canadian parentage, I commissioned a landscaper to fill
and meticulously level a sizeable chunk of backyard. We packed
it, surrounded it with railroad ties and hay bales, and one Thanksgiving
Day some years ago with the temperature drooping to 28 and below,
I turned on our lawn sprinkler. In hours the spot was coated with
ice, which we crunched underfoot every late November thereafter.
We watered and watered. In two days, just like many generations
of other northern North American parents, we began to flood and
flood, watery layer after watery layer atop each other to freeze
as hard as, well, ice.
Soon, we had created a patch of frozen water sufficient for
skating. And there until late March for countless afternoons,
brisk mornings and evenings, beneath bright lights, our son and
his grade school pals skated and skated and skated. They hooped
and hollered. They raced and fell and laughed. They shot pucks,
blocked pucks and narrated for an oblivious world their own overtime
championship heroics that are long forgotten and will never be
surpassed.
It was grand watching his skills develop, his confidence in
physical activity, his imagination and moves as those shiny skates
became an extension of his body. All for little cost and in the
safety of our own closely watched yard. "Are you ready to come
in now?" his mother would call as the evening thermometer fell.
"No!" came the reply, muffled by the muffler. For hours he wheeled
and dealed. And we watched. Finally, he had to come in and begin
the long, laborious process of undressing his bundled self, pulling
off sopping gloves, unlacing dripping skates, then unzipping,
unbuttoning and lifting off layer after layer of scarves, coats,
sweaters, shirts and socks. The hair was sweaty and matted. His
weary smile was delightful to behold. The hot chocolate was tasty
and hot. The excited, disjointed descriptions of on-ice exploits,
already well-witnessed by parental eyes, were totally out of sequence
but minutely memorized. Grand times each and every one.
But I must be honest. A second selfish joy was more private.
It came from the simple act of making, re-making and re-re-making
the ice, time after time, night after night, winter after winter,
all alone out there in nose-numbing air beneath so many stars
and a few bright lights, looking like a certifiable nutcase watering
the backyard in orange parka and minus-degree weather. It's silly,
I know, relishing the labor of making something as transparently
transient as ice, something that any Frigidaire can do anytime
with water. But even if I didn't live now where people blow into
their cupped hands and stamp their feet at 50 degrees, I would
forever remember and savor those many hours alone working my little
patch of ice.
I've often admired the work of carpenters and masons, thinking
they must feel added satisfaction in their work. At the end of
each day's labors they have something real and substantive right
before their eyes to admire and, literally, build on. Not always
so in my career world of public communications and writing. So
perhaps it was the satisfaction of an unskilled craftsman I felt
looking out the picture window one last time before going to bed
to admire a night's work, "my ice." No, make that "My Ice."
The ice-making process began every time -- sometimes several
times a night -- by lugging 75 feet of rubber hose from the warm
basement through the snow to the rink. One end was snapped into
a nearby faucet. The other flowed open and free. With it, I'd
scurry to the far corner before water started spewing. Holding
the hose 6 or 8 feet from the end, I'd whip it gently back and
forth on the ice to spill house-warm water onto the scratched
surface.
My breath clouded before my eyes. The only sound was the soft
whooshing of water and, then, the brief crackling as it merged
with existing ice. Slowly, still sweeping the hose back and forth,
I'd make my way backward across the ice, watching the new water
spill and fill every single crack and scratch, like a Disney cartoon
brush sweeping its smoothing colors onto a transluscent canvas.
I'd finally reach the corner, where I could step off into the
snow to flood the last little section.
Sometimes I'd shoot the water high into the country-cold air
where steam drifted off it, briefly clouding the countless stars
that hang over the rural Rockies. Occasionally, a star fell and
I made a wish. In the valley far below I could spot the stoplights
switch to late-night flashers to police empty streets. Sometimes
it would snow lightly, which was gorgeous to watch, those little
things drifting down through the backyard light. But it was also
annoying because each flake melted into an icy pimple on my
freezing water. This would require yet another watering an hour
or so later. Oh, too bad! Sitting indoors by the gas fireplace,
I'd have missed all that.
From rinkside, looking back toward the house like a farmer surveying
his manicured field of maturing corn, I could watch over several
silent minutes as the new water congealed and slowly but surely
transformed magically into ice. It was amazing every time. Frequently,
I'd return an hour later to redo the nearly smooth surface again
and again, not because it needed it but because I wanted it. And
in the morning on my way to work I'd slip down the hill to walk
a bit on the rink and feel, even through my dress shoes, the new
smoothness recently created.
Some mornings after a light predawn snowfall I'd discover the
tracks of all kinds of critters -- deer, dogs, coons, who knows
what. While I slept nearby, they'd wandered onto the ice and,
perhaps, they too had played. The footprints sure indicated more
than ambling. Returning from work at night I would accost my son,
"You didn't scratch up My Ice today, did you?" And he'd usually
admit that, well, yes, in point of fact he had scratched it up
real good. Which would prompt some serious tickling as punishment.
But even if he hadn't, I knew it required another coat of water.
Just to keep it fresh, you understand. Over those winter weeks
in those years I watered that rink way more than necessary for
juvenile ice skating. I'd "make ice" at the slightest whim. I
told myself I was building a reserve in case of a hot spell. In
Montana. In January.
Any warm days of say 35 or 40 degrees would turn the ice surface
sufficiently slushy to melt away any bumps or imperfections, which
the early dusk would freeze into glasslike smoothness. Still,
a little touch-up was obviously needed.
By late March most winters, when the ice would begin to decay
beneath each day's more enduring sun, we had upwards of 9 inches
of the shiny stuff, several hundred thousand pounds of ice sitting
there in the yard to skate over, to play on -- and to look at.
And, now, three years and 1,200 miles away, to forever remember
making.
* * *
Andrew H. Malcolm is a prize-winning veteran newsman for The
New York Times and Los Angeles Times, where he is
now a member of the editorial board. He's the author of 10 books,
including FURY, the biography of the smallest player
in the National Hockey League. He is the father of four and a
lousy ice skater.
(January 2004)
