Winter day: swirling and twirling across icy Limekiln Lake
It was a cold mid-February day and there was not a cloud in the sky. The bright sun almost blinded me as I trudged across the snow-covered driveway towards the garage where my sled was stored.
The snow underfoot squeaked and groaned with every step.
My sister, Erin, and I had decided to go down to Limekiln Lake to skate that chilly morning, and I wanted to bring the sled along so we would have a place to sit while we switched from our boots to our skates.
I found the sled pinned to the wall above the wood pile and grabbed it.
On my way out the door I picked up my hockey stick too, to accompany the puck I had stashed in my jacket pocket.
Erin waited for me outside, chatting inaudibly through a scarf that covered her entire mouth.
She grabbed an old push shovel from just inside the garage door which we would use to clear the snow from the ice rink.
I popped the runners of our skates into the slat opening of the sled and towed them behind me as we made our way towards the rink.
From time to time I cleared the way by whacking an errant snowball from the road edge with the hockey stick.
When we reached a point where we could view the rink we discovered, to our delight, that the fierce winds of the previous night had cleared it completely of snow.
Before us was an unlimited amount of polished ice and we could not walk quickly enough to reach it. I pulled the sled over a snow bank and onto the surface of the frozen lake.
The ice moaned and groaned as if some large monster were underneath it, trying to get out.
We quickly removed our boots and slipped into our skates.
Once we found our sea legs we were off skating to almost any place we wished.
I explored the swirls of thin snow that reached out in every direction like whispy, ghostly fingers.
My sister and I played a game of tag, skating in a maze-like fashion to avoid touching the snow with our runners.
I stopped for a few minutes and plopped myself on the sled totake a quick rest before commencing our game.
Then I picked up the hockey stick and held it out for Erin to grab ahold of.
She held on tightly as I towed her around behind me. But when l whipped her around a tight corner she let go and was propelled at top speed out onto the lake.
I skated to meet her and we continued to drag each other around the lake until our toes were numb.
Some of my greatest winter memories are of skating on the clean ice topped only by a few swirls of snow.
