Trying Not To Die:
The Inner Sport of Ice Skating
     The Mystic Muse, Winter 1988

There was a moment during the winter of 1984, when I was thirty-three—a moment when I came closer to skating than ever before.

Before that moment arrived, I had made many attempts to skate. I longed to glide with dignity and grace across the ice. True, I was ambivalent about relinquishing my firm toe-hold on the earth, and the idea of sliding around on a slippery surface seemed slightly absurd to me. Nevertheless, I persevered with my efforts.

My first attempts to skate occurred at the reservoir, a scrap of frozen water and woods wedged between clusters of new suburban homes, when I was seven. My father, his shoulders braced against the cold in his thin jacket, would stand on the ice in his leather-soled shoes and offer me kind words of encouragement. "That's the ticket!" he'd shout as I wobbled around, fear crouched in my gut and soreness crunching through my ankles.

Eventually the exertion of hobbling around the pond would tire me and my anxiety out enough that the terror released its stranglehold on my stomach. And even with my ankles sore and screaming, I would begin to get the hang of it. Then, invariably, Dad would call, "Time to go home!"

Through the years, what has impressed me most about people who skate is that they seem to move without making any effort. There appears to be some force within them, different from muscular exertion, that is the cause of motion. Skating seems to be a matter of moving, not by any activity of will, but by dint of sheer grace.

And so, in my own attempts to skate I waited for this grace to infuse me and move me. I waited, not knowing how to invite or install this mysterious motive force.

Or I reasoned and strained. I learned in high school physics that a skater's weight, concentrated as it is upon those narrow blades, pressurizes the ice past its melting point. You skate away not on ice, but upon a thin trail of water. With this concept in mind, I reasoned that shifting my weight, over this foot and then over that one, should move me forward. I shifted and pushed and shoved; maybe I budged a little. But mostly I remained unmoving, reasoning and straining.

Then, in the winter of my thirty-third year, one moment completely changed the nature of skating for me, and changed me as well.

On my way home from work on that particular afternoon, when I walked past the outdoor skating rink—a frozen-over swimming pool—only one person was on the ice. My friend Maurie, in borrowed skates that were way too big for her, was wagging around with her ankles at awkward angles, her face tense with determination and her eyes sparkling with the adventure of her second time ever skating.

She yelled me an invitation to join her. I watched her staggering zigs and zags and admired her willingness to risk appearing foolish. a decision formed in me of its own accord. I heard myself shouting: "Okay!"

Then, as if I couldn't get there soon enough, as if spring would arrive momentarily and thaw the ice before I could lace up my skates, I ran home and changed my clothes, put on extra socks, grabbed my skates, and ran back to the rectangle of ice. When I got there, Maurie was already witting on the side, taking off her skates and putting her shoes back on. I was disappointed that she was leaving, but still full of the exuberance which I had absorbed from her example.

As I pulled my skates on, the customary terror gripping my gut, I stated the terms: "Let's be realistic. What I am about to attempt is not at all the sport known as 'Ice Skating.' I am here to engage in another sport entirely, something called 'Facing My Fear on Ice.'"

I stood up and cautiously eased myself out onto the ice. Stopped. Surveyed my situation: "Okay, here I am, standing in these preposterous shoes, perched precariously upon these two knife-edged steel blades. I'm about to indulge in the absurdity of making myself slide around this glassy surface. The chances are I will fall on my ass several times, bruising at least my pride and probably my tailbone as well."

I looked down at my feet with uncertain yet hopeful encouragement. The ice beneath them was darkly transparent, with a multitude of oak leaves frozen within at all angles and at all depths. The whole swimming pool-turned-skating-rink looked like a tray of ice garnished to decorate a punch bowl for a party of giants. Making this metaphor produced an internal giggle.

Without anything better to do, I tried the shift-your-weight theory of skating, with no more success than usual. What was unusual, however, was this: my fear had disappeared, melted away by the metaphorically-induced delight of a moment ago.

I surveyed my situation again, and noticed that I was barely breathing. "Next step, Lisa: breathe." I recalled the breathing exercise that I had recently learned in yoga class. Inhale through your nose; exhale forcefully through your mouth while pulling your belly in and letting out a loud Haaa! sound.

So I belted out a few Haaa! breaths, and noticed that the vitality which fear had been gripping in my gut was now circulating freely through my body. All the way through to my fingertips and toes, what had been a heavy numbness gave way to percolating sensations of tingling and warmth.

With my fear disappearing, the sport needed a new name. What should it be?

What was I doing? Still applying the mechanics of the shift-your-weight theory of skating as I lurched around the ice, I was struggling to keep myself from keeling over. Yes, this was the sport of "Trying Not To Fall Down."

At length, another form of the sport emerged, and here is what transpired. I was standing at one end of the ice, taking a breather. I mused: "Suppose a figure of pure and radiant love is standing at the other end of the ice. She's stretching out her arms wide to me in invitation. She calls to me and asks me to be there with her, without delay and without hurry. There's no emergency or urgency in her calling. She simply invites me to come home to her straightaway."

My desire to be with her filled my whole being. I felt a conduit of light energy-looking like the elastic strands of gold fringe that decorate gifts wrapped for Christmas-connecting her center and mine. I yielded to this link and felt myself being pulled toward her, belly-first. Without thinking. The only thing I did was to feel my longing. Once I let that desire fill me, I did less than nothing at all: I let myself be transported.

Midway down the length of the ice my mind resurfaced long enough to notice what my legs were doing. Surprise! The way my thighs and buttocks and ankles and feet were moving didn't at all match my mind's idea of what "skating" should be. Yet my body was moving fluidly, almost effortlessly-and yes, gracefully.

And even as my mind marveled, "I'm skating! I'm finally skating!" I returned my attention to the full-bodied sense of longing and the central sensation of yielding.

I completed that run down the ice, came up again, and practiced imaging and feeling and longing and yielding a few more times. After four or five repeats I had had enough; it was time to go. I returned to the rink's edge, unlaced my skates, took them off, flexed my ankles, put on my shoes, and walked home, skates in tow.

On this afternoon, as I learned to glide toward the other end of the ice I came to know the kind of moving that is yielding, that is giving in to the pull toward home.

I long to live in the rhythm of my natural grace. I pray that I may move as fluidly toward the other end of my life.

If the true realm of ice skating lies beyond "trying not to fall down," I ask myself: how can I truly be living-rather than "trying not to die"? How do I move through my days being pulled, effortlessly, toward home?

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