Non-Schusser Finds Bliss In Other Sports

Skiing is not everything and its about time the public realized it. Winter sports, as all the publicity releases from hundreds of Chambers of Commerce indicate, include plenty of exotic and semi-exotic pastimes, and they don't all require several hundred dollars worth of hickory staves, poles, anti-glare goggles and ten basic kinds of wax (from slow-slow to fast-fast).

Winter or ice finishing is fine for the casual athlete who can only operate with bursts of energy. The technique, practised wherever there is ice in New England, is to chip a simple hole in the ice, drop a hook and bait into the water. At the other end of the line you attach a wooden bob with a violent red flag on a short length of stick and lay same on the ice next to the hole.

The Little Red Flag

At this point your first small burst of energy is over and you retire to your chair and wait; when the fish bites the bob and the flag are pulled into the water and begin waving vigorously. Then you have to unlock the fish and rebait the hook. "Bobhouse fishing," a popular variant of this sport, requires a little hut which you erect over the hole so as to keep warm while watching the red flag for action.

Tobogganing or sledding is fine if you yearn for childhood days, and can find a clean stretch of hill unpolluted by skiers.

Leading among the spectator sports are Sled Dog Races (mush!) and Horse Racing on Ice, a terrifying pastime that apparently takes place every Sunday at Beaver Lake, Derry, N. H.

Finally we have the old newsreel standby of bobsledding, strictly a spectator sport, of course; and sleighing, if there are any horses left over from racing on the ice.

About snowshoeing one publicity brochure says, "Inns and lodges often keep snowshoes on hand to lend the non-skier or the person who wishes to go afield and read the tracks written in the snow by wild creatures."

And skating, of course.