I am an avid downhill skier, so this year's delay at the Snow Bowl has been, to put it mildly, frustrating. I love the winter air, the snow, the low light of a winter afternoon. Not one to whine much, or stay inside, this weekend's snowfall afforded two great consolation prizes because the Bowl wasn't open in its customary fashion. And it represented two of the finest winter activities afforded by living here.

Saturday a.m. found me at Bog Bridge, lacing my hockey skates, facing a miles-long, unpopulated frozen Lake Megunticook. The only other cars in the parking lot belonged to the four-wheelers already tending their ice holes. While our January weather hasn't been perfect for black ice, the lake offered long glides over hard, hard ice as the wind strengthened out of the southwest in advance of the predicted winter storm. The ice was more than 10 inches thick in places (I had been out for a short skate in Friday afternoon in company with three DN ice boats so knew conditions were prime).

How to describe the untethered feel of a wide expanse of skateable ice?

I can only think of the feeling I have when I drop the mooring on my sailboat and have the vast water of the Rockland Harbor before me. 'Tis mine to decide where to go... and on skates there's not much dealing with the wind, so courses can be laid in any direction.

On Saturday, just after 9 a.m., I choose the smooth patches, picked my way out past the narrows to the cove on the south side of Lands End, whose unbuilt shore with its tall pines and rocky shore is much they way it would have been 200 years ago.

Push and glide, the iced rock fall on the ridge on Megunticook to the northeast, I had the lake to myself. As the first flakes started at just after 10 a.m. I was back in the car— you can cover a lot of ground quickly on skates — contemplating the coming snow.

I have resisted the Bowl's offer to climb and ski, not thrilled by the drudgery aspect of the clunky downhill boots needing toe-into the hill for a long hike. But the dry, dense snowfall of Saturday night spoke to me of my telemark gear. I figured I could climb in the snow-covered woods along the Kuller trail, then partake of the new, wider Windjammer trail as a reward for the effort of the climb.

It was early afternoon by the time I parked in the Hosmer Pond end of the Bowl lot. The wind had come up and the termperature was dropping from the mild 30s, so I fussed with the right combination of wind-proof gear and headed out, a little miffed that just as I was strolling off with skis over my should a Volvo decided to park not six inches from my own car... whilst the whole rest of that region of the parking lot lay open. Sometimes you gotta wonder.

It was the Volvo couple who came upon me again as I was fussing with the binding of my left telemark ski. Again, I felt intruded on my yearn for a quiet ski in the woods.

"Can I ask you a question about cross country skiing?" asked the down-parkaed young man.

"Where do we go?" he asked without giving me a chance to answer his first question.

"You can go anywhere," I replied, gesticulating to the snow-covered pond in the background, half-hoping they'd head for a ski there.

They were searching for the cross-country trail that in years past would have been groomed by this time of year—but you can't blame that on the Bowl. There just hasn't been any natural snow.

The couple struck off with skis over their shoulder up the hill in almost the right direction — I was feeling smarmy and could have given them more information, but I really had no idea what the new Bowl had done to the ski trails in this year of redevelopment. (Yes, I am on the Redevelopment Committee and should have had some kind of answer.)

And as I watched them hike up a questionable trail — not for any reason except it was exceptionally steep, and as I mentioned I was looking for a nice walk in the woods, not that kind of mercilessness — I found the base of the Jeff Kuller trail (two snowshoers had already left their marks) and started along.

The Kuller trail, namesake of the previous Bowl director who devoted a great deal of effort to the creation of a multi-use trail fit for snowshoers, recreational cross-country skiers as well as Nordic racers, is not an easy climb, but on that Sunday with the Neil-Welliverish, late afternoon light, a cobalt blue ski above the ridge of Ragged Mountain, and a new ski area laying at my feet once I'd made the climb... well, it was worth it.

Once at the plateau that marks the end of the old short T-bar and the top of the new short chair, I traversed to the sound a groomer pushing around heaps of snow for the upper terrain park. I stopped, hitched my heels down into the bindings, and enjoyed a less-than-a-minute, sweet, sweet series of connected telemark turns on our new Windjammer.

Thank you Mother Nature, for all the bounty of a Maine winter in the Midcoast.

Molly Mulhern lives in Camden.