89. Skating

 Skating

 

How people leapt at the idea and mind’s eye visions of ice skating… Thank all of you so much for stories of skating on a frozen river in the Yukon, playing pick-up hockey in New Jersey, skating in “wild” places away from closed and bounded rinks; picking up skates after six years and taking a grinning selfie. You wrote of “flying on ice,” of “skating in the wilds,” and of a grandfather who skated on Wallowa Lake.

 

I want to read something more into these memories, that maybe now, with Pandemic hopefully—hopefully slowing and politics hopefully—hopefully settling, that there’s a soul-calming—at least for many of us—that has released pent-up tension and allowed us to remember times when we “flew across the ice,” skated wild rivers, chased frozen pucks, and, today, as one so concisely said, find “a place to feel young and strong again.”

 

So thank you all for sharing your memories—and please remember Gerry too, a Vietnam vet smarter than a whip, who could quote Joyce and Ray Carver, who struggled much and accomplished much—we skated and skied and read books together many times—finding a loving relationship and a teaching mission and grateful students at nearby Eastern Oregon late in life—before cancer took him away. If you are of my age or a bit younger, and you are lucky, you’ll have people in your life like Gerry—or maybe you are a Gerry yourself.

 

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