On New Year’s Day, I was skating with friends on a frozen pond. The sun was bright, the wind was crisp and we would have been frost-bitten were we not so well-dressed and well-exercised.
The pond is about a mile long and half a mile wide. As our skates clicked over the dark-gray surface, we discussed whether this was truly a pond or a small lake. As it turns out, surface area is only one of four criteria which distinguish ponds from lakes, the other three being depth, subsurface vegetation and uniformity of temperature.
Wherever we skated, we could not escape the low-pitched hum of iceboats. When we first crested the ridge above the pond, it was thrilling to see bright white sails flashing in the sun. It seemed as if we had stumbled on a place where summer never ends. That illusion lasted only a second, because sailboats never move as fast as their ice-navigating cousins. Once we were on the ice, we saw the fleet ranged from a sleek, store-bought fiberglass model, which the skipper reported cost $4,000, down to homemade jobs cobbled together from plywood and sailboat parts. Some sailors had converted their sailboards into iceboards. They say that while the board moves quicker on solid than liquid water, they don’t tack as neatly.
The coves and bays were dotted with ice fishermen, hardy souls who come out onto the exposed ice and sit still. The season is early and the weather has been fair and only one shanty had been erected on the pond where we skated. The fishermen were after yellow perch, which is abundant in Vermont lakes and ponds and which is said to taste better when fished in cold weather than in warm. A four-year-old from our group discovered a yellow perch frozen in the pond’s surface, which was cause for five minutes excitement and speculation – about the maximum for four-year-olds.
Two games of pond hockey were underway, with piles of boots serving as goal posts. Pond hockey is a slower game than rink hockey, a missed pass means the puck goes skittering 50 yards out of bounds and the game stops until it is retrieved and brought back into play. Pick-up games are further slowed by uncertainty about who is on your team. There are no team jerseys, no “shirts versus skins” and all that winter clothing tends to look alike.
There were over 100 people on the pond on New Year’s Day. We were there because, as Vermonters, we take our winter sports seriously and because there has been very little snow. On one hand, lack of snow makes for acres and acres of open ice in this part of the country; on the other hand, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and snow-machine riding are tenuous at best.
Downhill skiing is possible, but most of the snow on the mountains is machine made and what there is has been beaten to glare ice by hordes of holiday skiers. There is some doubt as to how long the machine made snow will hold out, as 2001 was the fourth-driest year in Vermont since precipitation records have been kept. Reservoirs, streams and groundwater have all been drawn dangerously low. Rivers and lakes are flirting with record low water levels.
Storms buried Buffalo and howled across the south this week. Is it global warming or just a fluke? It’s hard to know, it’s hard to keep from wondering.
In a few weeks, the Winter Olympics will commence in Salt Lake City. Security will strict, but officials say the games will be secure. Oodles of corporate advertising will blanket the venues, but the question remains – how many more quadrennials will pass before winter itself is endangered?
On Thin Ice
On New Year’s Day, I was skating with friends on a frozen pond. The sun was bright, the wind was crisp and we would have been frost-bitten were we not so well-dressed and well-exercised.
The pond is about a mile long and half a mile wide. As our skates clicked over the dark-gray surface, we discussed whether this was truly a pond or a small lake. As it turns out, surface area is only one of four criteria which distinguish ponds from lakes, the other three being depth, subsurface vegetation and uniformity of temperature.
Wherever we skated, we could not escape the low-pitched hum of iceboats. When we first crested the ridge above the pond, it was thrilling to see bright white sails flashing in the sun. It seemed as if we had stumbled on a place where summer never ends. That illusion lasted only a second, because sailboats never move as fast as their ice-navigating cousins. Once we were on the ice, we saw the fleet ranged from a sleek, store-bought fiberglass model, which the skipper reported cost $4,000, down to homemade jobs cobbled together from plywood and sailboat parts. Some sailors had converted their sailboards into iceboards. They say that while the board moves quicker on solid than liquid water, they don’t tack as neatly.
The coves and bays were dotted with ice fishermen, hardy souls who come out onto the exposed ice and sit still. The season is early and the weather has been fair and only one shanty had been erected on the pond where we skated. The fishermen were after yellow perch, which is abundant in Vermont lakes and ponds and which is said to taste better when fished in cold weather than in warm. A four-year-old from our group discovered a yellow perch frozen in the pond’s surface, which was cause for five minutes excitement and speculation – about the maximum for four-year-olds.
Two games of pond hockey were underway, with piles of boots serving as goal posts. Pond hockey is a slower game than rink hockey, a missed pass means the puck goes skittering 50 yards out of bounds and the game stops until it is retrieved and brought back into play. Pick-up games are further slowed by uncertainty about who is on your team. There are no team jerseys, no “shirts versus skins” and all that winter clothing tends to look alike.
There were over 100 people on the pond on New Year’s Day. We were there because, as Vermonters, we take our winter sports seriously and because there has been very little snow. On one hand, lack of snow makes for acres and acres of open ice in this part of the country; on the other hand, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and snow-machine riding are tenuous at best.
Downhill skiing is possible, but most of the snow on the mountains is machine made and what there is has been beaten to glare ice by hordes of holiday skiers. There is some doubt as to how long the machine made snow will hold out, as 2001 was the fourth-driest year in Vermont since precipitation records have been kept. Reservoirs, streams and groundwater have all been drawn dangerously low. Rivers and lakes are flirting with record low water levels.
Storms buried Buffalo and howled across the south this week. Is it global warming or just a fluke? It’s hard to know, it’s hard to keep from wondering.
In a few weeks, the Winter Olympics will commence in Salt Lake City. Security will strict, but officials say the games will be secure. Oodles of corporate advertising will blanket the venues, but the question remains – how many more quadrennials will pass before winter itself is endangered?