It’s not really, really cold, but it is cold enough to make water turn to ice. Is it time for the backyard rink?
With much of the country in full on lockdown mode, the backyard rink has become an even bigger deal this year. People all over the country have been building them. Except those of us who have been subjected to above freezing temperatures.
I can remember my first backyard rink. I sort of learned to skate on it. Sort of, because I was never really a great skater and venturing out on the backyard rink involved more contact between the ice and my ankles than the skate blades. But that eventually changed.
These days, you can buy kits for a backyard rink, complete with liners and boards and nets and all sorts of fancy stuff. Or you can build your own. There are even people who build home made zambonis to refinish the ice surface.
That’s not the back yard rink I remember. I remember my father flattening out a patch of snow in the back yard and flooding it with the garden hose. Might not be ideal, but it worked.
Then we moved to a different house and no longer had a flat back yard. However, what we did have was a swamp. A swamp that bordered our back yard, and also my uncle’s back yard, who lived around the corner. Each year, he had someone clean the alder bushes from the swamp and stuck a small dam on the little brook that drained the swamp. Just enough to trap enough water to form a shallow pond. A frozen surface where we spent most of our days. And nights.
There were no home made zambonis. There were a few frozen nights where my cousin and I sprayed the surface with the garden hose with icicles hanging from our noses. And you tried to remember where most of the lost pucks ended up, especially the ones that fell through the ice so you could go out in the spring when the pond was drained and harvest pucks from the swamp.
Then came an indoor rink and we spent all our time there instead.
This year, the pandemic has given people more incentive to skate around their back yards. I have not yet had the opportunity, but it sure would be fun to try. I still have a pair of skates. Somewhere.
