By David Martin
Ice hockey players can walk on water.
~Author Unknown
I grew up in the far reaches of northern New York State in a little hamlet comprised of ten houses, a church and a one-room schoolhouse. I have fond memories of an idyllic youth spent playing in the woods, biking for miles on country roads and spending hours exploring the shores of a brook at the bottom of the hill behind our house.
Ice hockey players can walk on water.
~Author Unknown
I grew up in the far reaches of northern New York State in a little hamlet comprised of ten houses, a church and a one-room schoolhouse. I have fond memories of an idyllic youth spent playing in the woods, biking for miles on country roads and spending hours exploring the shores of a brook at the bottom of the hill behind our house.
Especially the brook. It was a playground and oasis that served our youthful needs for all four seasons. In the spring, it was the place to build dams to reroute the fast-moving water. In the summer, it was a berth for our series of homemade rafts, only one of which, if memory serves me well, could actually float with one of us standing on it.
The fall was a time for quiet reflection by the brook. We would wile away hours traveling up and down its banks and play Pooh sticks on the narrow bridge that carried the small blacktop road up the hill to our hamlet.
But the best time of all at the brook was winter. As Christmas approached and the temperature dropped, my brother and I eagerly awaited the formation of the first layer of ice. By January, the ice was thick enough to skate on and that's what we did, every chance we got.
On weekends, our friends and us raced down the long hill behind our house with skates, hockey sticks and shovels in hand. For it was almost always necessary to shovel snow from the surface to make our own private hockey rink.
Once the rink was cleared, we struggled with frozen fingers to lace up our skates. Two pairs of discarded boots served as makeshift goal posts for our rink of dreams. Hockey sticks that had earlier been stuck upside down in the piled up snow were now retrieved and pucks were dropped so everyone could play.
Eventually we would break into two teams and play a pickup game until the score became too lopsided or the sun was too far below the horizon to see the puck anymore. The score was often secondary; the joy was in playing the game.
When we finally stopped for the day, we could feel our toes tingling as we took off our skates. We trudged back up the hill and into our warm house, our cheeks glowing like embers, our damp hair flattened against our foreheads and our bodies enveloped in fatigue.
As the winter progressed, our rink would become more sophisticated as we added makeshift nets and carved out seats from the snow banks. If we had ever figured out how to string up lights and run a 500-foot extension cord, we surely would have continued to play well into the night.
Sadly, the rink's days were numbered. If we were lucky, we would continue to shovel off the next snowfall and continue playing. But if we faced freezing rain or a quick thaw, our rink would disappear for days or weeks at a time.
We knew our outdoor hockey season was short, which is why, I guess, we made the most of it. We packed in as many games as we could.
And once in a while, there would be a magical occurrence on our brook. Every few winters, we would be treated to a huge midwinter melt that swallowed up all the snow and was quickly followed by a flash freeze that turned our little brook into a clear perfect ice surface from shore to shore.
On those magical days, there were no makeshift nets or pairs of boots doubling as goal posts. We simply skated on our smooth glassy brook as far and as long as we wanted to, passing a puck back and forth until we finally had to turn around and skate home.
I remember the days of morning-to-night hockey with fondness. But there's a special spot in my memory reserved for those few magical days when we skated on our own endless rink.
The fall was a time for quiet reflection by the brook. We would wile away hours traveling up and down its banks and play Pooh sticks on the narrow bridge that carried the small blacktop road up the hill to our hamlet.
But the best time of all at the brook was winter. As Christmas approached and the temperature dropped, my brother and I eagerly awaited the formation of the first layer of ice. By January, the ice was thick enough to skate on and that's what we did, every chance we got.
On weekends, our friends and us raced down the long hill behind our house with skates, hockey sticks and shovels in hand. For it was almost always necessary to shovel snow from the surface to make our own private hockey rink.
Once the rink was cleared, we struggled with frozen fingers to lace up our skates. Two pairs of discarded boots served as makeshift goal posts for our rink of dreams. Hockey sticks that had earlier been stuck upside down in the piled up snow were now retrieved and pucks were dropped so everyone could play.
Eventually we would break into two teams and play a pickup game until the score became too lopsided or the sun was too far below the horizon to see the puck anymore. The score was often secondary; the joy was in playing the game.
When we finally stopped for the day, we could feel our toes tingling as we took off our skates. We trudged back up the hill and into our warm house, our cheeks glowing like embers, our damp hair flattened against our foreheads and our bodies enveloped in fatigue.
As the winter progressed, our rink would become more sophisticated as we added makeshift nets and carved out seats from the snow banks. If we had ever figured out how to string up lights and run a 500-foot extension cord, we surely would have continued to play well into the night.
Sadly, the rink's days were numbered. If we were lucky, we would continue to shovel off the next snowfall and continue playing. But if we faced freezing rain or a quick thaw, our rink would disappear for days or weeks at a time.
We knew our outdoor hockey season was short, which is why, I guess, we made the most of it. We packed in as many games as we could.
And once in a while, there would be a magical occurrence on our brook. Every few winters, we would be treated to a huge midwinter melt that swallowed up all the snow and was quickly followed by a flash freeze that turned our little brook into a clear perfect ice surface from shore to shore.
On those magical days, there were no makeshift nets or pairs of boots doubling as goal posts. We simply skated on our smooth glassy brook as far and as long as we wanted to, passing a puck back and forth until we finally had to turn around and skate home.
I remember the days of morning-to-night hockey with fondness. But there's a special spot in my memory reserved for those few magical days when we skated on our own endless rink.
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