One downside of living in Holland is the near-absence of Nature. But being out on a frozen lake that stretches for miles on a crisp, sunny day can make you forget details like the fact that the lake itself was hand-crafted as a works project in the 30s.
Clan Fitzgerald headed out to the IJsselmeer — or, more properly, the hydrologically distinct Markermeer — for a day on the ice. It was packed with long-distance skaters racing by, parents towing little ones behind on sleds, toddlers learning to skate in the Dutch fashion, behind a kitchen chair.
Every Dutch person I talked to last week, as the freeze settled in and the live coverage of skate races began on TV and skate fever seriously settled in, talked about skating with a whimsical, backwards-glance at their childhood, and more than one mentioned “that sound” — shhhhhh shhhhhh shhhhhh of long skates on ice. Not skating in circles in a rink, but out on a river or a canal or a lake, surrounded by the ice-quiet air. This is a deeply ingrained part of the Dutch psyche — not just the Hans Brinker foreign stereotype.
It’s been 12 years since this part of the Netherlands has seen this deep a freeze. My eldest son, Doon, who is utterly Dutch in most ways, has never had the chance to be out on anything but artificial ice in his lifetime.
What will he remember of the great Dutch tradition of skating? The changes that the Earth are going through are changing far more than just the weather.
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