The Highlight(s) of My Week

Is it the hockey itself, the playing, that made my Friday evenings the highlight of my winter? Was it the camaraderie in the locker room and on the bench, a bunch of men (and a couple of women) ranging in age from teenager to 60-something all gathered for the common love of a game? Maybe it was simply the winding drive through the rolling forests and swirling creek bottoms of southeastern New Hampshire, the New England farmhouses with their white siding and green shutters peeking through the trees.

Whatever it was, getting involved with the Friday-night skate at a local prep school was the one part of each week that was inviolable. But with the end of scholastic hockey season in early March (while I was celebrating my birthday by surfing in Mexico), the school had shut off the rink’s compressors, putting an end to my weekly sessions. I was bereft. What was I to do? Like a junkie going through withdrawal, I’d begun to hallucinate upon my return from Mexico.

Even in sunny San Diego there’s fun hockey to be found (photo courtesy: Jeremy Spitzberg)

I’ve written before of the joy I take in playing hockey, the pure Zen I experience when I’m on the ice. And every winter — save one: the year I lived in Austin, Texas — since I started playing the game in 1971 I have played hockey. Even San Diego afforded me the chance to skate regularly and achieve temporary satori.

Fortunately, I recently connected with another group that has doubled my weekly hockey dose. The new group skates twice a week at another local prep school, this one about a half-hour south of my home and reached by taking an even more scenic drive through quaint, picturesque New England towns than my winter drive north. We play later in the evening so the late-night drives home through those sleepy — and sleeping — towns scratches my Robert Frost-induced Yankeephile itch. And while the competition is not as strong as the winter skate, it’s still solid and challenging, and there are always two goalies — a rare occasion in the pick-up skates I had been attending to fill the void.

I don’t know how far into the spring or summer I’ll skate with this group, but the instant community that engulfed me once the puck was dropped my first time out and I could show what I was capable of has been comforting to this curmudgeonly hermit. As an added bonus, the workouts (and their timing) has helped me keep off the weight I lost in Mexico. And then, of course, there are those fleeting glimpses of nirvana when my blades hit the ice with each shift…

New England, Personal,

Fore!

The Luke 2012 Resurgence Tour continues. Today I played golf for the first time in just under seven years. Seven years.

The last time I played golf was the first week of June 2005. I had flown to Park City, Utah, from Alaska for the high-school graduation of my niece. That niece’s father, my brother, Eric, and my best buddy, T Mac, gathered for 18 holes at the Park City Golf Course (it has some hoidy-toidy name now, just like so many other things in the new Park City) and we got through 11 holes before a summer thunderstorm chased us off the links…and that was it. Until today.

Which is kinda crazy when you consider where I’ve been in the intervening years. I spent three years living in Solana Beach, California. I was six, seven, maybe eight miles from Torrey Pines, that glorious course on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla, California, and site of Tiger Woods’ great triumph in the U.S. Open. In the other direction, I was maybe 15 miles from La Costa. And in all that time in San Diego County, I never played once. Didn’t take my clubs off their hanger in my garage, even to go to the driving range about a quarter-mile away. What the HELL was I thinking?

I have no idea. But T Mac and I got out on the Ould Newbury Golf Course this morning…a course we last played “back in 1988, ’89, when we were both highly intoxicated,” as he put it this morning when we were walking to the pro shop. I can remember playing Ould Newbury a few times back in those college years: playing with my brother, who was visiting from Utah, and with my father’s late friend, Doug Cray. I even have the impression my father tagged along with us one time though he didn’t play. (Aside: I remember seeing Air Force One fly overhead, surrounded by four F-16s, taking then-President George Bush (senior) to Kennebunkport, Maine.)

Anyway, T Mac and I made the rounds today over the nine-hole course and I have to say: I wasn’t displeased. The first hole? OK, we can skip that. But starting with the second hole, I drilled most of my drives. My iron play absolutely sucked, to put it bluntly. And my putting wasn’t very good. But you know what? After seven years off, I expected all of it to suck a whole lot more than it did.

No, I’m not a good golfer. I’ll never be a good golfer. As I mentioned to T Mac today on the fifth hole: I know I’ll never, ever, be a good golfer…and I’m OK with that. I’d be stoked if I didn’t suck quite so bad but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it if I stay at this level.

It’s in keeping with my belief that golf is a very Zen pursuit. To be good at golf, you have to be focused on the present, not the future…the shot, not the results. If you make a good shot — if you’re here, now — the end result will be what you seek. But if you’re focused on where the ball is going to go and not how you hit the ball, well, then you’ll screw it up, for sure.

I screwed up plenty of shots today. I also nailed a few. More importantly, I had a great time. The resurgence continues.

Sports and Fitness, Uncategorized, , , ,

More Zen

I’ve waxed rhapsodic about many things in this space. Typically, those magical places and activities and sights have all been related to wilderness, the outdoors — and usually the ocean, sailing and surfing.

But there’s another part of my life that often provides more peace and joy than any other. And people are usually shocked when I say: “Hockey is the most Zen thing in my life.”

It’s true, especially this winter where there’s been so little surf and even less wilderness time. Instead, my weekly Friday-night skates in Exeter, New Hampshire, have been an exercise in pure ecstatic expression.

I’m not a particularly good hockey player but I know what’s going on during the game. And that’s the ultimate source of the Zen-like state I achieve while playing: that in-the-moment existence where the mind is silent and the body just acts and reacts to what’s going on around it. When I’m skating (especially with a high-quality group like the one in Exeter), that internal mental dialogue that’s prevalent 24/7 in the human mind goes silent. The discussion ceases and that pure animal mind takes over. It’s an all-too-brief bit of quiet that I cherish.

I first got into yoga after reading a book by Ram Dass in which he pointed out that if you were a really active person then seated meditation was going against your true nature and wouldn’t be effective (at least at first). He recommended active meditations such as yoga, whirling and dance as a more appropriate entry point to seeking awakening for such people. I would offer that dancing on skates on ice, chasing a little rubber disc, has been the method by which I’ve gotten closest to an awakened state. The great thing is: it’s a never-ending quest and I look forward to “meditating” at the hockey rink for the rest of my life.

Personal, Uncategorized,