When he was a boy of eight, Gary Noren’s mom would help him put on his ice skates and he’d walk down the gravel road for about a block to the lake. Skate guards? Not a chance.
“I’d meet up with friends, and we’d skate across to an island where we’d find sticks shaped like hockey sticks and some ice chunks for pucks. We played for hours and hours. I lived for it. There was a rink with lights and music in Chisago City where kids could skate on the weekends, but it was nothing like the freedom I experienced on the lake.”
That enthusiastic boy of eight is still evident in the man that Noren has become. He continues to spend every possible minute outdoors. When he’s indoors, it is often because he’s meeting up with others working to protect something he values, be it a river, a natural area, or a local historic site. He’s one of the army of people working behind the scenes on many fronts to make good things happen, more interested in positive outcomes than the limelight, for the most part too busy to be cynical. The world hasn’t managed to knock the joy out.
Consider an abbreviated list of advocacy efforts he’s led or participated in over the years. He initiated and coordinated the recycling and hazardous waste program in Chisago County, MN; was a founding member of the Friends group at Wild River State Park and started the long-running annual spring Seegwan Festival (now Earthfest); served on the board of Wild River Audubon and coordinated roadside and Sunrise River clean-ups; chaired a regional council for the Minnesota Environmental Education Board; served on the board of the St. Croix River Association for 8 years (2 years as chair); traveled to elementary schools in 20 districts to coordinate the Environmental Education Integration Project in Central Minnesota; volunteered for the Cloud Forest School in Costa Rica; and traveled to sites across the Osa Peninsula building relationships to create a Sister Park relationship with National Parks in the Upper Midwest. Whew.
Not every project takes off, but he’s happy when they do. “I love it when the things you spend a lot of time organizing actually continue to function and thrive long after I’m involved,” he says.
For Noren, participating in such efforts just makes sense. He’s mindful of the opportunities that he was given along the way, the luck of having been introduced early to a love of the outdoors. “I was one of those kids for whom Boy Scouts made a big difference,” he says. My mom and dad were not campers, and my mom didn’t like going to cabins, because she liked having her kitchen around. But I had this scoutmaster who used to say ‘three-quarters of scouting is outing.’ When I was 12 or 13, he took us on a 17-day canoe trip in the boundary waters, before it was a designated wilderness. I found out that I loved camping and canoeing and everything that came along with it.” Later, he was part of the first generation inspired by Earth Day, one of the reasons he has continued to invest his own energy in public celebrations that raise awareness and appreciation for the environment. “The first Earth Day was held in 1970, just as I was graduating from Concordia. It was this big eye-opening thing for me. Like, ‘Oooh wow.’ I started taking more courses where I could find them and getting involved with environmental organizations, seeing what I could do, together with others, to make a difference.”
As the years have passed with their many projects, experiences and adventures, ice-skating has remained a through-line.
At 11, he won first in his division race in the Twin Cities Suburban-wide Skating Championship, winning out against a big field despite being the only skater wearing hockey skates (he remembers falling at the finish line). Years of hockey in high school and college provided a way to be on the ice. He liked best the early season outdoor practices held on Bald Eagle Lake, when he could sometimes chase a missed puck gliding far down the lake.
But it wasn’t until a trip to Sweden in 1997 that he was introduced to what has become one of his favorite passions: Nordic skating.
He explains. “The blades on Nordic skates are long (21”) and flat. On lake ice, they glide better over the bumps, but call for a different approach to turning. Rockered skates, (with a blade that curves from heel to toe) are designed to turn on a dime. But when you have Nordic skates, you don’t turn on a dime. You maybe turn on a quarter,” he laughs. “You do have to think ahead a bit, since you can’t turn too sharply. One of my favorite things about them is that the blades can attach with bindings to your cross-country ski boots, so your feet stay warmer than in traditional skates.”
He got his first pair of Nordic skates when visiting the Swedish family that had hosted his son during a college study abroad program. A member of this family, Anders Hjelmqvist, was an avid Nordic skater who had a number of times completed the 80 km Sigtunarännet route from Stockholm to Uppsala. Anders was kind enough to gift an extra pair of his Nordic skates to Gary, who tucked them in his bag for the return trip home to Minnesota.
It was then he learned what it felt like to fly.
“It’s just effortless when the conditions are perfect. You can cover great distances with each stride, moving fast, like you’re flying. Sometimes there’s a little clatter when you go over rough ice, or the sound of the wind, but often it’s stone silent.” When he can, he skates near sunrise or sunset, when both ice and sky are filled with color.
He has sought out seasonal ice in many locales, including but not limited to Lake of the Dalles, North Center Lake in Center City, Lake Minnetonka, even a drive up to the Riverbend Skate Path in Warroad when the ice farther south wasn’t good. Someday he hopes to travel back to Sweden to do the Sigtunarännet. But most faithfully, he takes his Nordic skates out his front door onto Green Lake in Chisago City, MN, a five-mile-long lake with many beautiful bays. “If you do the perimeter, it’s a very long skate,” he says.
The window for good lake ice-skating can be very brief. You want ice that sets up with a smooth surface, thick enough to safely support your weight, ideally without a cover of snow. He uses a pointed iron rod to poke holes through the ice to check for thickness. For his part, he is comfortable with 2.5 inches, but he doesn’t presume to make recommendations for others. As a precaution, he generally carries a set of ice picks worn on a rope around his neck to help him get out in the event he breaks through the ice. He also now wears a helmet. (He once went chest deep into the drink, skating fast when he rounded the shoreline into a bay and encountered unexpected open water near a cattail marsh. The water was relatively shallow—he came up with weeds on his skates—but he cut his outing short and made it safely home.)
Some years, the ice never does set up well, and the window for skating is non-existent. But five years ago, on the year of his 70th birthday, the conditions allowed him to skate for 70 days; something that had not happened before and hasn’t happened since. The season is far more likely to be cut short by a snowstorm, a thaw, or both.
As he skates, sometimes his mind is clear: he is just one more living thing taking in the day. Sometimes, if there is a dusting of snow, he’ll find a line of fox tracks to follow. He notices and enjoys the patterns in the ice crystals. When skating on Green Lake, he often thinks about the cemetery up on the hill where most of his ancestors are buried, and the family’s farms that, one by one, are going to housing, with trees removed and lawns down to the lake. He recalls his dad, who grew up on one of those farms during the dry 30s when the lake was not there and they grew potatoes on land under the ice where Gary now skates. All the lives lived; so many stories told and retold. “I have it on my mind a lot,” he says, “in a nice way.”
When Christmastime comes around, he trims the tree with a little skater ornament that he got from his mother who, like his father, is also now at rest in that cemetery. When he was in his 40s, she knew that Gary’s Nordic skates took him far out on the lakes, and was nervous about water and ice, so he wouldn’t tell her when he was going out lest she worry. He laughs to recall the time when one of his mother’s longtime friends spotted his truck parked by the lake in town and “told” on him.
He does accept that wild ice can present some risk, but says the greater risk by far would be in missing the experience of skating: “If people knew what it felt like, they would understand.” He appreciates a passage from Sig Olson’s “Northern Lights” essay in Singing Wilderness, which deeply resonates with him. He reads it aloud:
“Hurriedly I strapped on my skates, tightened the laces, and in a moment was soaring down the path of shifting light which stretched endlessly before me. Out in the open away from shore there were few cracks — stroke — stroke — stroke — long and free, and I knew the joy that skating and skiing can give, freedom of movement beyond myself. But to get the feel of soaring, there must be miles of distance and conditions must be right. As I sped down the lake, I was conscious of no effort, only of the dancing lights in the sky and a sense of lightness and exaltation.”
These days, when the ice is right, he might be out on Nordic skates with other family members and friends. You can sometimes spot three generations of Norens out on their Nordic skates. More often, he is still the lone figure at dawn or dusk, gliding across the surface, each easy stride carrying him a long way down the lake, flying solo. If he doesn’t make it back to Sweden to do the Sigtunarännet, it will be okay. He’s found plenty of heaven right here.
