The First in a Series of Necessary Experiences

Have you ever (in the middle of the night while tripping on acid) listened to the elegant light scrape of ice skate blades cutting into the smooth black surface of a northern lake? Wind and rain followed by deep cracking temperatures yield a plane of crystalline glacier upon which you, lying on your stomach, peer into thick glassy depths.

Gliding in large strides away from other dark forms of moving companions, the soft combined whirr of skates becomes a whisper of your lone presence in a black frigid world. Your stinging cheeks remind you of the flow of blood, your warm body steaming beneath layers of insulation. Life is muscles, blood, skin, electric hum, euphoria, solitary effort and momentum.

Lying on your back, you open your eyes to the stars above the northern pines that own the frozen earth, the marvels of rock-ephemeral ice and soft falling snow and glass lakes and quiet creatures of winter. Like you. Instinctively your arms and legs move in large angel arcs.

Soon your ears prick to the approaching scratch of blades and you arise gliding, passing, receding, circling, orbiting, enclosing, listening... a transitory tribe in a disappearing landscape. Like you.