The Mandalas of Winter

The Mandalas of Winter
“I’m going over the hill to shovel the pond.” Kind of an odd concept. Shovel a pond? Ah, but you Canadians, you hockey players, you skaters, know what I’m talking about. It’s a northern thing. Shoveling the snow off a frozen pond to make a skating rink.

Twenty five years ago I bought some bush property in eastern Ontario to build a house on. Little did I realize the ponds I acquired by default, would become so important in so many ways. In the summer we enjoy the panorama and the creatures that flock to it. Ponds, swamps and bogs are populated by such a diversity of life. Sometimes we canoe in it, but we can’t swim because they are warm, murky, brown water, beaver ponds that collect water at the top of the watershed and disperse it slowly. But in winter the ponds blossom, at least for us. In the beginning it was all about the kids and the activities a growing family could do together. It became a social place for the hockey games every Sunday that family, friends, neighbours and townies all came to. We celebrated winter birthdays with skating parties and bonfires and spent quite a few New Years’ eves on the ice. It taught us how important common interests can be. It was our social glue.
My Christmas this year was all about skating joyously with my three growing, skills acquiring grandkids. They wanna’ be here and that makes me very happy.

When our own kids went off to school and off on to their own trails, we used the ponds less but still tried to maintain a rink. It became our gym, our exercise machine. Shoveling and skating in an endless loop: oh yeah, I can work up a sweat thinking about it. It has it’s cerebral side too, if you are going to put that effort into it, you had better use it. Tomorrow it could be gone: buried in snow or under water. There is always the anarchy of weather to contend with. That live for the moment/carpediem concept becomes so tangible and real. Many times the neighbours have phoned and said “lets go” and I drag my butt off the couch because I know the possible consequences. Who’d want to miss skating through the night on a cold, crystal blue moonlit glassy pond, so quiet your blades slicing the ice seems loud.

You never know what the ice will be like. One year a dam broke after the ice had formed and the water underneath escaped . After a few days the ice slumped forming little hills around deadheads and rocks. It was like skating with moguls. A frozen alien landscape.
Another time we took skate guards and hiked over the dams, four or five ponds back, playing “Calvin” hockey. Like “Calvin and Hobbes” we made it up as we went. Picture six or eight people, a dog or two, sticks and a ball meandering for miles on beautiful ice.It was keep away, hit the target, race, chase or fetch. Your choice.

Some times the ice forms without snow and you have the freedom to skate everywhere. That’s a rarity though and most often you join the snow removal gym. This year it’s been all about the gym. We’ve had a lot of snow. To make it interesting we morphed it into a huge artistic canvas. Building the mandalas of winter.

When you shovel the pond it’s defined by the economy of energy output. It can be a huge job.

Depth of snow, bodies present and the tools at hand, all define how you approach the task. But even that goes out the window when boredom and body aches suggest a change. We noticed our methodical methods were creating gargantuan patterns on the ice. So we got artistic with it.

A few people can make short work of the pond by pushing their shovels round and round from the center out leaving a beautiful spiral mandala.

Last week the snow was deep which means inevitably you shovel the same snow numerous times. Too much for a continuous push. As we were diligently going at it, my neighbour and fellow zamboni, Deb said “if we shovel half the pond and then shovel half that again we’re caught in the infinite loop and will never be done.” I said “but we’ll sure have a large rink” and “what’s done mean….anyway”.
Now we’re at a crossroads. It’s been a snowy cold winter so the snow banks are high. Inevitably the weight of the banks cause the sides to sink into the pond and the center will belly up, forcing water up onto the ice. Sometimes this works for you and sometimes the rink disappears. We’re on the downside of winter and all these factors are causing things to happen. What to do? That’s the million dollar question: whatever we do will reverberate into the future. A set of footprints, or a wolf’s paw prints, across the rink on the wrong day, can sometimes be a flaw that plagues the surface all winter.

And now the weatherman is forecasting rain. Arghhh. After twenty- five years of this, I’m still not used to it. Reality is: winter’s over. How does it always sneak up on me? All the signs are here, spring is around the corner. My guerilla pond skates have pretty much come to an end. Wow, talk about tunnel vision. We might get one more good skate if there’s a flash freeze, but realistically artificial arena ice is the only thing that is going to extend my skating season. Aw, but the flip side of this is that the Exclaim Hockey Summit of the Arts is upon us
Man what I won’t do for a skate.

~ by gwcollins on April 30, 2009.