Open at 9 am. The temperature at 7 am is 8º. The forecast high is 21º. Today is pretty much a repeat of yesterday, with the exception of the dusting of snow. Today’s dusting is a light dusting, very light.

All trails are open and the skiing is fabulous. The track is good, the corduroy is lovely. Skiing will be like this for the around the next 10 days or so. The best weather and skiing we have had in the Northeast for a number of years. We love winter.

Yesterday I posted about Dick and Gary skiing the 25 km and putting their names on the board. I stated that this was not Dick’s 1st 25 km. Dick has racked up more kilometers skiing at Wild Wings over the years than anyone by a long ways! I failed to mention Dick is 84 years old. So here is their photo again. And a shot of the board as of today. “Dick ’85” is not the year Dick graduated from high school. He considers himself in his 85th year of loving life.

The second photo from yesterday, with the kids, prompted Andy to remember this poem, below the photo. It is about kids and skating. When you read it, think kids and skiing, or skating, where ever your memories are. The photo below is of the children from a local school who are here every Tuesday afternoon.

“Ice

BY GAIL MAZUR

In the warming house, children lace their skates,   

bending, choked, over their thick jackets.

A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy

it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,

clumping across the frozen beach to the river.   

December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,

the first sheer ice, black, then white

and deep until the city sends trucks of men

with wooden barriers to put up the boys’   

hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,

of trying wobbly figure-8’s, an hour

of distances moved backwards without falling,

then—twilight, the warming house steamy   

with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legs

aching. Outside, the hockey players keep   

playing, slamming the round black puck

until it’s dark, until supper. At night,

a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.

Although there isn’t music, they glide

arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,

braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never

be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,

find her perfect, skate with her

in circles outside the emptied rink forever?”