Embracing the gifts of Mother Nature

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/03/2018 (3122 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As the Saturday temperature climbs above freezing, The Forks hums to life. Kids clamber over snowdrifts, and slip their feet over the now-sticky trails that wind through the site; there is still time, it appears, to embrace the winter. 

Outside the wildly popular Ice Castles that soar near the Red River, artist Kal Barteski waves brightly. 

This is the first time a hermitous writer has seen the glistening spires; upon hearing that, Barteski groans. Should have seen it when it was new, she says, before the week’s gentle sun smudged its bones. It’s still beautiful, though. 

Barteski’s connection to the glacial structure is both serendipitous and intentional, the way great art often is. Last summer, she was stationed at The Forks, working on a polar bear painting commissioned for the Canada Games. 

A man approached her, and started asking questions. He was an artist too, he explained: he made ice castles. 

Together, Barteski and the ice-castle man — his name is Brent Christensen — strolled the grassy patch of land between the stage and the river. He conjured his vision in gestures: here will be an arch, here a slide, a spire. 

Barteski was enchanted. “He could see it perfectly in his mind,” she says; she visited weekly, until it was done. 

At Christensen’s behest, she left her own artistic mark on the castles too, tucking seven polar bear paintings inside the structure’s embrace. The bears have long been one of her muses; surrounded by ice, they seemed at home. 

“I feel like I met a kindred spirit,” Barteski says, of the collaboration. “The fact that he gave me carte blanche to do whatever I want, whatever size, whatever material, whatever colour… he was like, ‘we’ll put it in.’

“It was really meaningful to put polar bears in something like this, and be part of celebrating winter.” 

The Ice Castles is in its last days, now; it is scheduled to close to the public next Saturday. Its charm, and its poetry, is that it was never meant to last; it is enough that it soared for our memories once, even if only for a couple of months. 

But oh, what a life it has lived in that time. Since the structure opened, its colourfully-lit caverns have welcomed firedancers and fantasy-themed photo shoots, thousands of visitors, and genial Canadiana fixture Rick Mercer. 

Now, before it begins to vanish forever, the structure will have one last hurrah. 

On Sunday, the castles will host Yoga On Ice, an hour-long class sponsored by lululemon. Attendance is by donation; proceeds will go to Barteski’s Polar Bear Fund, a two-year-old project that supports communities close to the bears. 

It’s a sparkling concept, on its face. There’s a “why not” factor to it, which tends to invite magic: yoga in tuques and boots? Sure, why not try it? The yoga poses might be somewhat hindered, but there’s a charm to that fact, too. 

“People like participating in cool stuff,” Barteski says. “The yoga might be questionable, you’re going to lay on some ice that’s the opposite of hot yoga, but it’s in a really neat place, a beautiful location, a powerful location.

“To me, it was just a way to be, like: ‘thanks, winter.'” 

What’s incredible, or maybe not, is how popular the idea was. The Ice Castles have room for about 50 to 70 yoga mats; spots for the event sold out within days, leaving Barteski to muse about ways to pack a few more people in. 

Yet that response proved what, in a way, it feels as if this city is still discovering: there is a ravenous hunger in Winnipeg for events which redefine how we use public space. Especially in the city’s heart. Especially in winter. 

As the new days of 2018 inch towards spring, it’s worth reflecting on how much better we’ve gotten at this. 

The Forks, in particular, seems to have figured out the formula. Take the existing environment, both natural and man-made, and find opportunities in its familiar shapes. Embellish them in unconventional ways to add flashes of wonder. 

Over the last decade, that approach has brought the world to Winnipeg to design warming huts. It’s inspired a cadre of Winnipeg chefs to raise a pop-up restaurant on the frozen river. It’s raised an Ice Castle, and made it a yoga studio. 

And nearly every time a new layer is added, Winnipeggers flock to embrace it. When the Ice Castles opened, photos of its fantastical shapes flourished on social media; as with some Nuit Blanche installations, it became a pilgrimage.

“Give people a reason to get out here, and they’re out here,” Barteski says.   

This could be an error in my own memory, but looking back on the Winnipeg of my youth, I can’t remember the city having so many interactive winter celebrations; Barteski, who moved here from Saskatchewan in 1996, can’t either. 

The take-away here is, perhaps, that this renewal of public space doesn’t have to be complicated. The Ice Castles required a sweeping effort by a Utah-based company, but the idea to put a yoga class inside of them was simple. 

Or, Barteski points out, just look at the river skating trails, which stretched for 10 kilometres this season. Nature built the rivers, and each year nature transforms them. All we need to do to redefine their space, is add an invitation. 

“Ploughing that path, and allowing people to walk there, gives them this whole exotic location that’s only there at certain times,” Barteski says. “It only takes one trip to be like, ‘this is awesome. We should do this all the time.'” 

Yes, we should. Not just the river trail, or Ice Castle yoga — by necessity, those features belong to a season. It’s more that, for as long as I’ve been alive, the magic of those features is what Winnipeg too often seemed to be missing. 

Events that invite us to connect in our shared spaces. Events that allow us to recontextualize the natural and man-made environments we pass by every day, transforming them into places of fellowship, discovery, and wonder. 

We have gotten much better at extending those invitations. How else could we offer them, in the future? 

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca