I stood on the lake’s edge. The frozen surface was mottled white with snow and the gray of bare ice. Further out, the gray had a greenish tinge where water had seeped through. The temperature hadn’t risen above freezing in days, but the snow, treacherous insulator, had directed the warm of the lake against its icy skin, blotching the clear complexion with shallow slush patches. Beyond, the eastern banks rose up into hardwood hills where denuded winter trees clambered up the ridge, branches rasping against the overcast sky.
I unsnapped the skis and started to walk, listening carefully to the sound of my footfalls.
Eventually, the sharp tap of my ski boots on ice diminished to the crunch of snow and then muffled down as I crossed the into slop zone. I looked down and saw slush water playing over my boot tops.
I navigated past ice fishing holes with spiderwebs of dark cracks running out. A small ice fishing colony hugged the north end. Perhaps they were dubious about the ice further down. I couldn’t blame them. Open water lapped not far away, one wound in the ice a casualty of a neighbor’s home heating system, another, apparently maintained by a couple dozen ducks swimming around. I had tested this ice the day before, and now felt pretty solid about it. (I had been less confident at the time and had worn a drysuit and life vest just in case.)
It was nonetheless a relief when I felt the ice solidify underfoot once more, and an even bigger relief to reach shore. I scrambled up steep section of bare rock beneath the rope swing, swung a leg over a guardrail and road-walked a short distance to the start of the path.
I’d run on this trail many, many times, but never skied it. It wouldn’t have been practical to carry the skis over asphalt to get here, nor was there any parking. The frozen lake represented a rare opportunity to explore familiar territory in a new way.
Not that the adventure started off particularly promisingly. Only half the trail was snow-covered, forcing me to make an awkward climb uphill climb.
Good luck skiing back down this later, I thought.
Sublime ski conditions are rare here in southeast Connecticut. You learn to take what you can get.
Fortunately, the snow cover consolidated further up the trail. I started to fall into the nice stride and glide, where you can actually go a minute or so without having to break the rhythm to avoid rock or root. It didn’t last long.
Soon I was side-stepping gingerly on steep downclimbs. This felt cowardly, but at the same time, the narrow trails left little room for adjustment, and plenty of opportunities to steer over a bare rock or smack a tree. Then there was the fear of a blowdown on a blind corner that would take me out at the ankles.
Some hills I was bolder than others, earning a few sustained sections of enjoyment, intermingled with an equal number of mild disasters.
I cruised down one hill and managed to pull the brakes only when my ski tips had practically dunked themselves in Silex brook.
.
In most places in the Connecticut woods, to stop is to hear the dull background roar of traffic somewhere — or, more often — from all sides at once. Here, however, the brook’s watery conversation was its own white noise
I took a pause to admire the dynamics of the place.
Fingers of dark water and light air undulated with one another beneath an ice layer— yin and yang. In the open water of the main channel, bubbles maneuvered at the whim of hydrology.
One particularly large bubble sashayed coyly into eddy behind a stepping-stone, a mirror to the world overhead: black branches and white sky.
I thought about how much I wanted to just take in quiet moments like these, how distinct they seemed to me as life seemed to be increasingly defined by noise and distraction.
I also knew that it was unfair to ask nature to be more than it was. I could absorb some things, but only so far. However, much I wanted it to be, this was not my true medium. I better knew the din of words and flashing images — the realm from which I had temporarily absconded.
Here, I was a tourist, lucky, sometimes, enough to pick up some things with the help of a phrasebook, but otherwise just another set of uncomprehending eyes and ears.
The bubble held for a beautiful moment, lingered, then was gone.
