Cross-country skating

For the first time in my life, I wish the winter wouldn’t end so soon.

Also for the first time in my life, I am going to write about sports.

You see, I am not a sports person. I hate spectator sports. I get bored with competitive sports after one hour tops, usually much sooner. The longest I can tolerate any sport is a full day of downhill skiing once in a few years. The only sports I can enjoy even longer are ones that allow me to get to interesting places – like cross-country skiing or mountain climbing. But that’s not really sports for sport.

Yet this year I kind of came up with a new sport and enjoyed it. It’s cross-country skating.

It’s not entirely new. Skates were invented in present-day Finland about 5000 years ago, likely by hunters, for travel across frozen wetlands. Finland was a perfect place for that: the country is a labyrinth of sprawling lakes, slow rivers and large swamps.

But then skates became toys… and now I was probably the first person in centuries to use them for their original purpose. It was absolutely amazing. Later I found out that cross-country skating is actually a popular thing in places like Alaska and Scandinavia under the name “Nordic skiing”. People there use long-bladed detachable skated and ski poles. Well, the same thing can be independently invented many times.

Unfortunately, I bought skates just as the winter was coming to an end. Today is probably the last day for safe cross-country skating before the weather becomes April-like. Fuck the fossil fuel industry and the politicians it owns.

But I did manage to do some exhilarating late night runs along frozen rivers in Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, and one on Delaware River. It only works on broad, slow rivers, large lakes, and open marshes where ice is smooth and snow gets blown away by the wind. Nights are better because they are cold and you are not in danger of being “rescued” by overzealous police or park rangers.

You don’t have to be a great athlete, but you need to be reasonably sure-footed and know the basics of travel on ice. It takes only a few minutes to learn to jump over cracks and avoid bumpy patches.

The difficult part is finding good access. Sometimes you just park near a small bridge, drop a ladder on the ice and climb down. Sometimes you have to ski down the riverbank. But once you are on ice, it’s just pure fun.

You slide swiftly across the glassy, snow-rimmed surface that sparkles slightly in star- or moonlight. The air is sharp and crispy, and keeps you cool and fresh no matter how fast you run. The forest is dark and silent, but dry reeds whisper quietly even in slightest wind. The only other sounds are the high-pitched hissing of your skates, the occasional cracking of ice, and very rarely a distant song of an owl or an alarm call of a startled deer – they don’t recognize the sound of skates as steps and sometimes let you approach very closely. But most animals stay in the relative warmth of dense woods on cold nights, and seldom show up on open shores. Once in a few hours you see a dead bird or some other carrion frozen in ice, surrounded by tracks of mink, raccoons, foxes, ravens or fish crows. It’s very easy to cover long distances, even with a backpack (although I haven’t yet tried it with a really heavy one). My leg muscles hurt afterwards, but I hope it’s only until I get more practice.

I now think of my brief exploits as proof-of-concept tests. Next winter, weather and family obligations permitting, I’d like to do a long skating trip somewhere in Canada, ideally to circle Manicouagan Meteor Crater along its ring-shaped lake. That’s about 220 km; after some training I could probably do it in 2-4 days. I haven’t camped on ice or snow in ages, but wouldn’t mind a skills refreshment, and it’s a beautiful part of Quebec, so why not?