[dropcap letter=”O”]n Megunticook Lake, in Camden, the boaters, swimmers, and paddlers had left for the season, the cabins were shuttered, and the docks were out of the water. Along the frozen shoreline, children wobbled about on skates as parents called instructions over a constant clacking of metal on ice. But farther out, Bob Lombardo had the rest of the lake’s 1,300 acres to himself, the only sound the whoosh of his long-bladed touring skates tracing thin arcs across the ice.
In an average winter, Lombardo, who lives in Orono, gets maybe 60 days on the ice, sometimes skating as many as 40 miles an outing.
Lombardo grew up skating on frozen ponds and swimming pools in New Jersey. The first time he saw someone whipping around on touring skates, he felt a sense of awe. “It just struck me,” he said. “This is what I want to do.” In his early 20s, he moved to Maine and bought touring skates of his own. A carpenter by trade, he’d work mostly in the summer and then spend winters chasing good ice.
Now 67, he knows that good ice is an elusive, fleeting thing, constantly imperiled by thaw or snowfall. To suss out where he might find it, he relies on experience, intuition, weather reports, and depth maps. And although “wild ice skating” — Lombardo’s preferred designation for it — is a solitary pastime, he and a small cadre of fellow ice chasers share conditions with each other (and anyone else curious about exploring frozen waterways) via a “Maine skating and ice report” public Facebook group.
That morning on Megunticook Lake, conditions weren’t perfect — pressure ridges rippled across the lake from repeated thaws and freezes — but the air was crisp and the sky was blue. Lombardo spent hours gliding past small islands, around wooded necks, in and out of coves. Angling back to shore, a cold breeze at his back and a thermos of hot tea waiting in the car, he glanced skyward. Overhead, a bald eagle glided effortlessly past brittle, frozen treetops, and just for a moment, Lombardo rested on his skate blades to watch.
Farewell, My Lovelies!