Imagine this: A surface smooth as glass; a familiar lake frozen over; skates cutting through the ice as snowflakes descend lazily from a hazy sky; crackling air and a warm heart.
That magical paradise was my reality last week during an especially brisk day.
My wife, Brianna and I had the nearby lake to ourselves — I in hand-me-down hockey skates, she in a favorite pair of figure skates she’s worn for more than a decade. Brianna began figure skating as a child and continued through high school. She is fantastic (and I’m not biased in my reporting). While she’ll tell you she’s rusty and a shadow of the talent she once was, don’t be fooled — her grace on the ice is born of a lifetime of practice.
On a linear plane of the lake, I watched Brianna flow through movements, sweeping easily from one edge to another, while trying not to trip over my own feet. It was really quite breathtaking, especially against the backdrop of a frozen world.
As for myself, while certainly a far cry from Brianna’s level of skill, I more or less grew up skating and can make it for a few hours before tiring out. As I write this, fond recollections of wintertime skating adventures spring to mind — of flooding the backyard and skating into the dark; of taking laps at the Mullins Center during public skating; of lacing up my skates at a the edge of Look Park’s quaint pond and Paradise Pond at Smith College in Northampton (back when that was allowed); of my dad throwing a large rock onto the freshly shoveled surface of a frozen lake somewhere in Amherst to make sure it was safe.
Somewhere between then and adulthood, however, I stopped skating, wallowing instead in a different kind of seasonal New England past time: complaining about the cold weather and wishing for warmer days. For perhaps a decade, I vocally disliked winter and was determined instead to move to California. Then I met Brianna, the talented figure skating, alpine ski-addict and all-around wonderful human. She changed my life in so many ways, among them, she helped to reignite my love for wintertime activities such as skating.
These days, I want to go to California for its snowy peaks and epic ski runs.
When winter comes, I try to take advantage of every spare second outdoors and spend the warmer months wishing it was cold again (seriously, I dream about snowboarding in July). All of this to say, I’ve learned to embrace the season. Wishing for spring won’t make it come any sooner; regularly strapping on a pair of skates or skis (or taking up any kind of enjoyable seasonal hobby) will definitely make it feel like it’s here before you know it. And when it does arrive, you might find yourself wishing for just one more powder day — just a few more weeks of snow-cover, please, or perhaps a late-spring nor’easter.
This year, 2020, I’ve learning to more broadly apply that same philosophy to life, in general.
While I can’t say that I’ve particularly enjoyed the overall experience of being in quarantine for months at a time, I have learned to appreciated certain aspects of it — for one, the slowdown has been nice. It’s afforded me a lot of time in nature, blessedly, and for introspective activities like cooking, drawing and music, which had fallen by the wayside amid the busyness of life. Since March, for example, I’ve written an album’s-worth of songs, picked up the harmonica and banjo, and finished a few graphite drawings that I’m particularly proud of.
And it’s not just me that seems to have caught a spark of inspiration this challenging year.
Around me, I have watched friends and family members rise to the occasion — by reading and writing books, compassionately raising children, learning new talents, helping out neighbors in need, generously giving of themselves for the benefit of strangers, advocating for the disadvantaged. I’ve witnessed teachers quickly adapt to seemingly impossible learning environments; supermarket employees work for three weeks straight without a break; public service employees knowingly drive to a workplace at which they might or might not contract a deadly disease; the entire world has watched enraptured as healthcare workers (shout-out to Brianna, a pediatric nurse at Baystate Springfield, a few of my aunts who are nurses in the Boston area and my dad, a janitor at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Florence) have selflessly labored in at-times war-like conditions.
2020 has been a terribly difficult year, during which we’ve mourned the loss of more than 300,000 compatriots. At this point, I think everyone knows of someone personally who has tragically succumbed to the coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic will forever mark this generation. It will be remembered in history books and through personal stories. 2020 will be joked about, parodied and disdained on television networks and around dinner tables for many years to come. The gallows humor will cover a very real pain and darkness that society as a whole experienced this year — in short, societal grief.
We have all been changed; some for the better, some through tragedy.
And now we find ourselves again submerged in darkness, both literally and figuratively. We are barely on the other side of the winter solstice and, with many having traveled for Christmas, transmission rates are at an all time high. I started this column, “Finding Beauty,” as a way to fill the space where this newspaper previously published “Trail Mix,” a weekly roundup of outdoor events. Back in March, when Gov. Charlie Baker issued the state’s first stay-at-home advisory, life as we knew it ground to a halt; everything was canceled, leaving Monday’s outdoors page with a gaping hole next to Bill Danielson’s wonderful “Speaking of Nature” column (a personal favorite, by the way). For me, “Finding Beauty” has turned into so much more than a weekly writing exercise — it’s become a meditation of sorts, a spiritual search for nature’s light in dark times. And it’s helped me to seek out the important things in life — like a frozen pond graced by a beloved figure skater or a familiar trail just a skip-and-a-jump from the back door.
At the end of this damned year, 2020, I find myself hesitant to infuse too much optimism in what will come next. 2021 will undoubtedly bring with it problems of its own; the pandemic is certainly not bound by Caesar’s calendar. The winter will be long and dark.
But just as the winter equinox has passed its threshold, lengthening the days instead of shortening them, a vaccine has emerged and I am hopeful that the coming year will be easier than the last. Meanwhile, find me skating on a frozen pond, lost in nature and snowflakes, still learning to embrace this long and difficult season.
Andy Castillo is the features editor at the Greenfield Recorder. He can be reached at acastill o@recorder.com.