Woodward Pond (03-02)

Historical narrative

The cold came in mean that evening, the kind that slips through coat seams and settles deep in your bones. The wind skittered across the fields sharp as a straight razor, rattling bare tree limbs, causing folks to hunch over with their collars up high. Those were the nights for skating on Bowie's Woodward Pond, part of the Belair estate, along Collington Road (Rt. 197). It was the brutally cold winter of 1961—January 29, in fact. With temperatures near zero, the pond froze to a foot thick. When the ice was that solid, a bonfire was in order. Steve and friends skated that night, a perfect night stitched together from simpler times—cheeks glowing warm from the fire, noses cold as ice, stars sharp overhead, with the whole world seemingly slowing down to the sound of skates gliding easily through the dark. The stuff of memories.

Watercolor

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