Conscious Choice: Silent Sports

December 2004 | Cover Story

Silent Sports

For some, snow is not just something to shovel. It’s a magic carpet into field and forest, providing entree to quiet solitude and peace of mind in a complex world

by Bob McCray

When our kids were little, our family voted winter as our favorite season, mainly because of snow adventure sports. Now, even though our children are grown, my wife, Nancy, and I still like winter the most. That’s the time of year we get to strap on our cross-country skis and turn down the volume of everyday life. We can get away from the boom box and TV hoopla, people using up extra minutes on their cell phones, and even the “engine whine” from snowblowers, snowmobiles, and all-terrain vehicles.

“We need the tonic of Wildness to wade some-times where the bittern and meadowhen lurk...”
— Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau

My first “Walden experience” came skiing along a creek in Wisconsin’s Governor Dodge State Park. It was mid-morning, and the sun filtered through a cathedral of birch trees. A patch of sunlight illuminated a silver-powder cross-country trail, and in the distance brightly clad skinny skiers poled along the creek. Just then a deer stepped into the spotlight on the trail.

It was a classic “moment.” But instead of just enjoying it, my tourist reflex was to rip out my camera and capture a masterpiece. Alas, I had left my camera in the car overnight so the works were frozen solid, and I captured ebony negatives with lightning streaks.

But that did not dampen my enthusiasm for the sport, which I eventually learned provides something just as valuable as pretty pictures: solitude. This is a scarce commodity in our fast-paced, multi-tasking working world — where families on average spend eight hours a day with the media blaring.

“In solitude the mind gains strength, and learns to lean upon itself.”
— Laurence Sterne, clergyman and novelist

The quiet outdoors can be a soul-soothing balm for the time-pressured working stiff. Thoreau often referred to the cycles of life and the rhythm of the seasons. Getting outside can help you connect with nature again. This chatter-free time with Mother Nature can be a rejuvenating “stillness” experience.

Silent sports such as cross-country skiing and hiking can provide entree to the quiet world of “the road less traveled” that brings us peace of mind in a complex world. An added plus is that quiet sports don’t disturb the environment. Cross-country skiing is a good example. On the cross-country trails all you hear is the soft “swoosh” of skis and the wind in the pines.

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t know about that, but I do know we’ve been wearing our “busyness badge” a lot lately — and some days it “glows.”

Saturday in particular is our crazy, rush-around, errand day. After a nose-to-the-grindstone workweek, our reward is a mindless “to do” list (weather-strip the storm door, change the cat litter, etc.), so that Saturday is now an extension of the work week.

But in winter, when the snowflakes come floating down, all that changes. We put skiing first on our list. We come back with a fresh outlook and a new attitude: Who cares about to-do lists? It will all get done.

We got our weekends back. Now, that’s a tonic. And, because cross-country skiing is a quiet sport, we can go where the bittern and meadowhen lurk. In Skokie Lagoons, for example, we’ve skied within view of the deer yards in winter.

Winter is, after all, a natural time of contemplation and introspection, when folks hunker down at home. F. Scott Fitzgerald called Chicago the indoor city. While television-viewing increases dramatically in winter, and the Internet is in nonstop download, the good old fireplace is still a family magnet — one of those rare times you can just “do nothing” together without an excuse. You can just “be” until the last glowing embers riffle up the chimney in twisting knots of smoke.

But, when winter comes, I have my nose pressed against the glass watching for the first frosty flakes.

“Our voyage of discovery consists not in seek-ing new landscapes but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust

New snow makes me itch to return to our favorite summer haunts with “new eyes.” For me, nature slows down life, and snow becomes a magic carpet into field and forest, not just something to heave off the sidewalks.

Over the years, we’ve found marvelous cross-country skiing at Midwest state parks, from well-groomed, slip-sliding tracks to unbroken, back-country meadows. Some of our favorite Midwest state/county parks for cross-country skiing have included Moraine Hills State Park in McHenry, Ill.; Lapham Peak near Delafield, Wis.; and Petrifying Springs in Kenosha County, Wis.

But nearby parks and forest preserves can be just as inspirational. We’ve skied and hiked the Evanston and Chicago lakefronts for striking scenery. I read somewhere that tens of thousands of thoughts cross our minds each day, and that most are the same as yesterday. I’ve noticed when I’m hung up on some work problem, cross-country skiing can switch off autopilot and quiet the mind, just by paying attention to the snow. On March mornings, when the wet snow has frozen overnight into a crust, you ski skate over a crisp, matte-finish surface, punching through with your poles, and as you skim along, the crust crackles and crunches, like rollerblading over sheet metal. Other days, dry, fluffy powder mounds over your shoe tops and the snow crystals are tiny pearl ball bearings, floating your skis along the trail.

Still other times, you can’t help but focus on the rhythm of your body in motion, and the repetition seems to clear out the cobwebs. Breaking a trail in a snowstorm — leaning into the wind — is more like marching. Other times, when the snow is fluid, the motion is more like dancing. You go with the flow, strides seamlessly blending, swishing away concerns for long stretches of time.

“A lake is earth’s eye looking into which the be-holder measures the depth of his own nature.” — Thoreau

Lake Michigan in winter can be beautiful and awesome, with majestic waves and titanic arctic-ice flows; and the ski trails can be blown by horse-killer winds. One time, a few years back, on a cold, windy day, the waves splashed the lakeshore with a carpet of ice that sparkled like diamonds in the sun. I saw a man face down on the ice. I thought he had collapsed, and rushed over. He hadn’t. He was photographing the Chicago skyline through some icy bushes. A day later, the picture appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

Another time, I discovered an ice-covered tree drenched by the waves near the Evanston Art Center beach. I had my camera, but didn’t take a picture. It was “too common.” Two months later that same Evanston tree was a full-page spread in Photography Magazine.

Lakefront sunrises can be stunning. In December and January, you can lie in bed all morning and still ski a lakefront sunrise. Dawn breaks around 7:15 a.m. I also run the lakefront. Some cloudy days it’s like someone’s smudged a thumb across the horizon. Other days it’s like Mother Nature splashed a bucket of blazing red and orange paint across the sky and let it run down. On still others it glows like coals heating up in the Weber, and after a silver flash, a red beach ball pops out of the water as if finally released from the grasp of a 3-year-old who had been holding it underwater. (For sunrise times check aa.usno.navy.mil/data/ )

“The more quiet you are, the more you can hear.” — Ram Dass, Theosophical philosopher

But it’s not just “new eyes” that come with Mother Nature’s winter makeover — you get a new nose, new ears, and new fingers. Harms Woods, air-brushed with snow, smells as fresh as high-country Colorado — different from those charcoal-grill-mosquito-candle-pickle-relish smells of summer. When snow falls in large, wet paperweight flakes, kids stick out their tongues and taste the snow, and finger-paint with their mittens in the fluff on the picnic tables.

In my experience, cross-country skiing is aerobic. It tunes in the feel-good hormones, burns calories, and is knee-friendly — the slide-and-glide doesn’t hammer my knees like running. But as a friend once said, “It’s more of a Sigrid Undset thrill than a Hemingway thrill.” Undset was a Nobel-prize winning Norwegian historical novelist (1882-1949) whose writing style was more subtle than Hemingway’s in-your-face charging through life to run with the bulls. Cross-country skiers don’t count the RPH (runs per hour) like downhillers.

And, as a cabin fever remedy, cross-country skiing can get you off the couch and outdoors, regardless of temperature. In fact, overheating is often the problem. One time, packing for a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I asked my wife if I could wear my downhill ski underwear cross-country skiing. She said, “Yes, if you wear something over it.” Good advice.

But with temperatures often in the 20s (Illinois is nicknamed the “banana belt” because of its tropical winter temperatures) long underwear need not apply. Layered clothing is the key.

“Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like leaves of the trees.” — John Muir, naturalist and Sierra Club founder

Our daughters live in Colorado, so over time we’ve skied some nice cross-country areas, including the Montezuma Basin back country; the Summit County trails at Breckenridge, Frisco, Keystone, and Copper Mountain; as well as trails at Winter Park, Devil’s Thumb, Aspen at Ashcroft, and Eldora.

But skiing locally can be just as grand. The Midwest with its great flats and challenging chutes-and-ladders hills, offers a winter splendor that can lift the spirits and act as a circuit breaker for winter doldrums. During snowy weeks, we leave our skis and poles on the back porch and the boots in the hall closet. When snow permits, we ski four nights a week at a local park.

“The first ice is especially interesting and perfect.” — Walden Pond, Thoreau

Snowshoeing and hiking are other quiet winter sports that come to mind, but what most people don’t realize is that it’s possible and pleasurable to traverse waterways in winter, as well. In summer, we enjoy paddling up to heron, egrets and bittern, but when the temperature drops we join a few other hardy souls while most kayakers are heading for warmer climates or paddling in indoor pools.

Thoreau takes three pages to describe “first ice” on Walden Pond. Last year I paddled Skokie Lagoons in cold weather. The lagoons had plenty of open water, but where there was no current, “first ice” was forming. The ice made a loud noise when it cracked, and sometimes the kayak would slide up on the ice shelf a little, or the paddle just skidded on top of the ice, and I had to crack it through the ice. A fisherman trolled the lagoons in a boat with the bow painted with a red shark’s mouth and teeth like “jaws” the ice-buster.

“Happy Canoe Year” is an annual New Year’s Day bash held on the North Branch of the Chicago River. Last year more than 200 boats participated, and the launch site near Willow Road looked like Seurat’s La Grand Jatte with kayakers and canoers (families, kids, and dogs) dressed in festive paddling outfits (dogs, too). The trip is sponsored to publicize water quality improvement on the river trail. Ralph Frese, famed Midwest paddler, describes it as canoeing through a Christmas card. (For 2005 New Year’s Day trip details, contact Chicagoland Canoe Base, 773-777-1489; www.chicagolandcanoebase.com.)

The Chicago Area Sea Kayakers (www.caska.org) has a group of more advanced cold-weather-equipped boaters (dry-suits, cell phones in dry bags, compasses, etc.) who paddle Lake Michigan in winter. Tom Heineman, president, notes they have even practiced Eskimo rolls in the frigid waters to test headgear. For the curious, their Web site posts winter paddling tips. For example, “Regardless of your paddling skills it’s a good idea to always have at least one person along for winter paddling.” More than just a good idea, I consider it a “must” that at least one of the paddlers be highly capable of taking care of himself or herself as well as other paddlers in the event of an upset.

I’m no Eskimo, but recent winters have been quite warm, and on those occasional sunny, waveless, windless days that I’ve paddled Lake Michigan in January and February, I’ve had a wonderful stillness experience: no lifeguard whistles, no Jet Ski whines, no cigarette boat groans, only the sounds of the paddle slipping into the water, dripping Olympic circles behind the boat, and an occasional ice chunk bumping the hull. On these sunny, Indian summer-like days, it’s like the Caribbean, without the airfare.

Bob McCray, an Evanston-based freelance writer, teaches writing, and in the winter spends as much time quiet time as possible outside.

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