Iceboating is not just about iceboating……roaring, rattling, bashing across ice….….it’s also about community….it may even be fundamentally about community….many of us humans–especially we of the male gender—need a context around which to nucleate community….and monday on Plymouth was like that….

there was really no reason to go….fog predicted…. almost certain calm….but i knew Doug Raymond would be there, and though the intervening temps couldn’t have destroyed yesterday’s safe ice…..i know how we hate to be alone on ice in the early or late season…so i headed North thru the freezing rain.

there was Doug setting up the original ‘Cheapskate’ for a daughter showing interest in her dad’s passion. I assume this is the boat which has brought the design to our knowledge. we set it up together, and in the light southerly, Doug was just able to keep her going. I set up Icywood, which i had left on the ice overnight, and had about the same luck….

then, wonder or wonders, Bill Cunningham arrived with a cunning ice bike, a Surly Pusley with enormous studded snow tires, and we all experienced the wonder of this new technology…..gliding fast, effortlessly, with a graceful sure-footedness across three different ice qualities: dusted snow, wetted snow orange peel, and occasional shell ice….this is surely a machine we will see more of…it’s an additional way–with skimbatting and nordic skating–to enjoy this vast and wild environment.

Bill is another of the ‘forever young’ inspirations in our community….how rich we are in role models for moving against the norms of aging! details of his amazing bike will appear shortly.

without wind, Doug and I lunched at the Plymouth Store, and finding calm on our return, he began teaching me about runners: to lubricate their pivots with bar and chain oil, and to tighten them just snug, but able to pivot easily….this is extremely important….then, as i decommissioned Icywood, Doug showed me how I—having arrogantly sharpened my own runners without instruction for 12 seasons—was sailing on a totally ruined set of blades!…..he offered to teach me, if i stopped by his shop on the way home….i didn’t realize that the day’s wonder was just beginning…

Doug is buried in the woods of Montville….his shop is unremarkable….i had expected a Dave Fortier ‘tour de force’……before we got started, he invited me for a bite at his house nearby…you walk a hand-made bridge across the bend of a large stream…..and…..arrive…in a total fairyland!….here i am…a wordsmith of some caliber….awed to silence….inside the house or out…at any moment you open your eyes widely and see a depth of field, a layered collage of magic….tile, paint, wood, steel, windowing, sculpted doors, woodwork, carving, inlays, cabinets….everywhere…. a Gibran said: “work is love made visible”

But the best is the site-ing….the house seems to float on its cement piers above the river with its buildings connected by airy walkways….and….dear fellow iceboaters….should you sit in his living room…. as though sitting in the river itself , you have a long view up its playful wooded watercourse….the movie of your day stops-frame….there isn’t the slightest reason to move from that room….

soooo…i learned not to be awed by runner-sharpening….how to reprofile a runner…how to move the V-notch right on center….how to round the ends, dull the first and last 2 inches…. not polish with finer grit belts…and eventually headed South into the bleak 4 o-clock drizzle…

home to cook a hasty supper….we feed two lovely children every tuesday, who lost their mother to cancer….and are blessed thereby with two ‘grandchildren’….. while our own hyper-independent progeny show little fecundity…and then blubber my way thru our annual Messiah sing-a-long.…Lloyd and Marge Roberts always come…when will i ever dry up?…this ancient story of comfort, of wonder, of renewal in the dark of the year….why am i so moved?….this Scrooge, since the age of 12….excoriating the off-trackness….the missing-of-the-mark… of an annual human passage so necessary of notice and ritual.

and though…gripping my Buddhism against the storm….i can’t conceptually grasp the meanings…i just enter in….willy-nilly….i just give up…and sing and feel with all i have…