Canada Games Oval

There is nothing more Canadian than grabbing a pair of skates and heading off to an outdoor rink; in Halifax this winter it is a 400m oval on the Commons. To skate around and around with people of all degrees of ability, being blustered by wind on the North side,and enjoy the laughter and comments being made -there is nothing to compare. These are the simpler pleasures -grace- that makes winter tolerable. After starting to sweat, while the nose is cold, one begins to enter oneself no matter how many are on the ice. One's brain does a dance of working out pieces of gathered information and day dreams. The farther one skates the freer one becomes and the more grace is experienced. At 30 x 400m there was a lot of grace.