My love affair with winter continues

          There's free ice skating on Friday night.
          I don't think I can express how happy this makes me.
          Ice skating. For free. I mean. It's ice skating. Let's just take a moment here to appreciate this.
          Here's an obvious statement: I really love ice skating. It's right up there with sledding and building snow forts. It's right up there with campfires and sitting on rooftops. It's right up there with mountains and Chicago, with lakes and picnics and London and canoeing, with reading and embraces and coffee dates, with music and a clean kitchen and late night conversations. If I were to make up a list of things I want my life to be full of, ice skating would be on it.


          [I think my future has to include living near water. I've always lived near the lake, and it's weird to be in this landlocked state, where the winters are brutal and the summers are sweltering without that kind and moderating body of water.
          Lakes! Swimming and beaches. Ice skating and broomball. What's life without these? Emptier, for sure. We still have jars of beach glass in cupboards in my house. I remember competing with my brothers to find the biggest or most interesting piece.
          When I was in England, I visited Portland, a southern coastal town. The big thing there was kiteboarding - surfing while holding onto a kite. I think this is a hobby I need to pursue.]


          I don't know why I love skating so much. It's pretty mindless, just gliding around in circles for an hour or so. It's hypnotic. I realize, now that I think about it, that I get sort of the same rush from ice skating as I did when riding on that speedboat this summer, except it's a little slower, a subtler thing; I don't have laughs jolted out of me, but I smile the whole time. Something about that ease and movement.
          The other day, the temperature dropped from fifty to ten below. Coupled with thirty mile-per-hour wind gusts, the wind chill was thirty-seven degrees below zero. I was walking back from the school newspaper office with a friend, and even though it was miserable and we screeched a hearty "Fuck!" with every step, it was a thrilling, half-laughing protest. When we emerged into the safety of our dorm, we stamped and laughed, gasping with incredulity at how cold it had been. We jumped up and down in the elevator, blood racing and hearts pumping, aware of being warm and young and alive after that deathly cold.

          Irresistible. I love coming back red-cheeked and breathless and bruised from skating or sledding or snowball fights. Winter pastimes are so exquisitely exuberant and loud and bright. They always have that end, too - they always end in hot chocolate and closeness and warmth. Life needs more of that.