I signed up to teach ice climbing. I don’t know why I did this, I hate winter. This is my strange way to try and survive it. We were lucky enough to get out for a blue clear day, after a week of biting cold made us a little ice in upstate NY. I thought a lot about how ice was getting harder and harder to find here, how in a few more years there might not be any more ice climbing in New York State.
I know in my gut this is bad, but it goes against the very core of my nature to wish for cold.
When training for the class we did introductions and were asked to share a memorable winter day.
I shared the January I’d gone to the Adirondacks and the temperature was in the negatives and we’d gone snowshoeing and dog sledding on mirror lake and it was the coldest I’d ever been but it was also the first time I’d thought I could love winter. I still think about the big dipper hanging above Kiwassa Lake on a night so cold the air crunched and I feel a quiet stillness in me like an ember.
This day on the ice was not that good, but it felt beautiful and pure in other ways. It felt good like a day on the rock. It felt hard in all the right ways.
