I arrived to find a gigantic kidney-shaped outdoor rink, with people of all ages skating around slowly. There must have been a couple hundred people out there, and it looked as if the pond was a lake or river, the way it snaked away, out of view. Opera music wafted over the masses, from speakers attached to light posts.
I didn't see any hockey players though. A nice couple told me there were two rinks on the opposite end of the park. So I walked over and the gigantic rink just continued on and on and on, with park benches and even trees lined up down the middle of the ice surface, so those who needed a break could take a seat and chat.
I found the rink and laced up the skates. When I first got there, there was a backlog of players: probably about 8 or 9 subs on each side. I stuck it out though and gradually the numbers went down and you actually got into the rhythm of playing.
Probably since my second last year in Calgary, pond hockey has really been the outdoor activity that gets me through winter. It's unlike recreational hockey, where people take things super-competitively, but it's way more exciting than aimlessly skating around a pond. Granted, like everywhere else in the world, the games do have their douchebags, but that does little to ruin a good time, and it actually gives you someone to play a little harder against too if that's what you're into.
Well today, there were old-timers and kids alike. And a lot of girls. A team of girls from Brossard came down and after we played for a while, they asked if they could form one of the teams. So it was guys vs. girls and the teams were pretty much equal.
"Imagine that. In 2010," joked a dude who had quit smoking just four days prior. His first shift was about as long as it took someone to smoke a cigarette in -40C. Very quick.
And after a couple hours and making a few new friends, I took off my skates and then took off myself. And it was on the walk that I had a brief revelation (I'll call it a brevelation):
Since I've arrived in Montreal, I've found people dance like crazy here: after dinners, at parties, at bars, everywhere. I, on the other hand, don't dance. I've been telling people that I'll need to start dancing to survive here.
I don't know why I don't dance. It's probably because I'm just too self-aware and feel goofy doing it unless I really feel like doing it. It's the same reason I don't speak French with a French accent. It feels like I'm acting. It's not natural to me.
Anyways, on the walk home, I realized potentially that the reason I love pond hockey so much, is because I get the same feeling from it that dancers get when they are moving to music.
Bear with me for a second.
Dancing, they say, is the one activity where we actually celebrate that we indeed have bodies and we articulate and express ourselves by moving them around.
I find by stick-handling around the ice, by putting the puck in my skates then kicking it to my stick, or turning around to start a rush only to see someone coming and turning around again, or finding someone streaking and hitting them with the puck right on their tape, or putting someone inside out because you put yourself inside out, gives me the same high. I feel like I'm aware of each part of my body and how they all have to move together to make something happen even if I'm not thinking about it happening. It just happens, the parts work for themselves and I feel that's a lot like dancing. I don't need music because the rhythm is the game and the pace of it and the way it is played and you just become a part of it.
I think when I dance. I don't think when I play pond hockey.
That's why I love it so much.
1 comment:
you should imitate pond hockey moves on the dance floor.. that would be something. the canadian elaine benis?
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