The crust on the snow is my walkway, fragile like a paper bridge. I wince with each ginger step, waiting for icy powder to rush into my boots. Once I wouldn’t have noticed the chill, but now I know I can save my warmth if I’m patient. Above, below, left and right, an icy world reaches out to pull me in. “Wait,” I whisper. “Almost there.”

     Up ahead, I see a swatch of sky, a clear blue break in the white monotony. I grin, knowing my final destination is close. Soon, I reach the clearing: a quiet pond sits uninterrupted by trees, frozen in time. 

     I find an old stump for a bench, and rest my feet on a bare patch of brown grass. My red fingers pry open the latch on my bag, and I pull out my prized possessions; my tickets to paradise. As I pull the laces tight around my feet, the worn leather of my skates bends to cradle my toes. The once-shiny blades are covered in a thin layer of creeping rust, but I don’t notice. 

     I’m already standing up as I tie the final knots. For a second, I think about finding a dry path, but impatience gets the best of me and I take off into the snow. Without my boots, cold seeps into my socks, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but the ice.  

     As my blade lands on the pond it’s like I’m taking my first steps all over again. I can move in ways I couldn’t before, and the wind in my hair gives me flight. Grey-blue in the snow-filtered light, the ice magnifies every whisper of the trees. Above, below, left and right, the icy world is the same as I remember. 

     There’s a familiar sound locked away in the crisp slicing of my blades. As I turn I hear screams of delight, and as I slide to a stop I hear giggles bouncing off the ice. In stillness the sounds are gone, but beneath fresh marks I can see the scars of winters past etched onto the pond. Their makers may be gone, but even alone I’m surrounded, for the trees, the wind, and the ice remind me I’m skating among friends.