by Pam Mistyhn

Created on: March 11, 2009   Last Updated: March 12, 2009

It was the Winter of '77 and I found myself alone on Wiley's Pond one cold Saturday morning. It was early still; too early for my classmates and friends to be awake, the morning silence like frozen gold all around me. I sat on the snowy ground and put on my ice skates, admiring the shiny blades and running my finger over them to assure myself of their sharpness. They were perfect skates. Although they were well broken in, they were also well cared for. Cleaned, polished, and shined like a religion after each skate.

I stood up, put on my gloves, fixed my hat to cover my ears and stepped out onto the frozen pond. It was a small pond, with a little island in the middle. It reminded me of a race track for skaters. Ice hockey players had the back side of the island, while figure skaters such as myself had the front side. Slowly I let myself glide at first, warming up, getting the feel of the smooth and rough patches of the ice, and adjusting to the freezing wind slapping me across the face. After a lap or two or ice investigation, I could contain myself no longer.

Freely, quickly, easily my skates and the glossy ice became one and I was no longer captain of my ship. My feet took over. They danced, they swirled, they spun, they jumped and did mid-air splits. In my head was the music of Olympians and I imagined my gold medal performance in front of the whole world. The applause made me as dizzy as my spinning, but I kept going. I could be the next Dorothy Hamill, I think to myself, as I listen to the swooshing of my skates and watch little shards of ice fly across the pond like a million sparkling diamonds waiting for me to claim them.

There was a freedom inside of me that I found on that pond. It was a freedom I'd never experienced before, where I was still young enough to be innocent and free and not care what other people thought of me. I could skate like no one was watching and if they were watching, it didn't matter. The point was that I was sure of who I was on that ice, in that moment, and there was no question about what I could accomplish.

Life on that pond was either my realty or my hallucination. As I've grown up just a little bit since then, I've come to realize that my feeling on that pond was the realty of who I was, the core of my being. The hallucination was what happened as I became a victim of circumstance by the way the world was and tried to conform to what it wanted and expected of me. When I feel I've lost my true self, when I feel low and beat down, I can close my eyes and go back to Wiley's Pond, feel that cold air slapping my cheeks, hear the cutting of my blades on that ice, and remember that inside of myself there does lie a champion.

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