new england icon
ice capade
Chancing it on frozen ponds has been part of New England’s winter games since the
colonists first strapped on wooden platforms outfitted with blades
Written by BRUCE IRVING
When the great ice age glaciers
retreated about 13,000 years ago,
they left little watery reminders
of themselves all over New England. Our lakes and ponds are
so numerous — 1, 100 of them
in Massachusetts alone — that just about everyone who
grew up around here has a tale to tell about skating on
one. Without the neighborhood pond and its merry skaters, Currier and Ives would have had a much tougher
time rounding out their catalog.
While there seems to be some argument about
who introduced hockey to North America (the Micmac
Indians of Nova Scotia or British military officers), it’s
almost certain that Europeans brought the skate here and
with it the idea of sliding around on the ice for pleasure.
The colonists strapped on wooden platforms with metal
blades — often imported from Holland, Germany, and
especially England — though New Jersey’s first governor, William Livingston (1723–1790), recalled the skates
of his boyhood were made of beef bones. This isn’t as
far-fetched as it might sound: the oldest known pair of
skates, dating to 3000 BC, were made from the leg bones
of a large mammal. They were found at the bottom of a
lake in Switzerland, proving that even ancient mothers
had good reason to worry about thin ice.
The danger persisted in the New World. Samuel
Sewall, who went on to be one of the Salem, Massachu-
frozen ponds all over
New England have long
been transformed into
outdoor recreation areas by
adventurous skaters. Here,
a group of children and
adults glide around on a
natural skating pond under
a covered bridge.
