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I love hockey, really love it, though it is possible that that may not be the most sound use of that word. I mean, I love my wife and I love my children, but if longevity partly defines commitment, well, hockey has been in my life a lot longer than they have.

Hockey, you see, is not simply a sport, it's a tendon that directly connects me to both my country and my childhood. And although I've always had this abiding passion for the game, it has found its deepest resonance playing outdoors. Sure, sometimes you're stuck in the wrong climate or you like to play in the summer, but the game has the most profound impact when played in the winter, outside, which is also where my best memories reside.

The first time I raised the puck with a wrist shot was at the outdoor rink in Dalhousie, the neighbourhood where I grew up in northwest Calgary.

My excitement was compromised by the sight of my friend Tommy lying on the ice, groaning, because the puck flew directly into his unprotected, and still developing, private area.

Then there was the time I played creek hockey with some friends down at their ranch south of Calgary; we played for what seemed the whole day.

With no boards and only hats on the ice as goal posts, it was like playing hockey on an endless rink, hockey as metaphor (a metaphor, I might add, that had fitness as its only boundary). When the game moved indoors as I got older, I played in arena leagues and was even a pylon for a time on my college team, but it just never held the same thrill.

I've come full circle, and the hockey I play now is Wednesday-night community league shinny. We're talking pond hockey, my friends; shinny - not that wussy indoor, warm-rink, heated-benches game, where the surface has no gaping cracks, where the Zamboni buffs and polishes the ice to a jewel-like sheen. That's for divas. I'm talking outdoors, real ice, real weather, when frostbite is an issue, when the mercury is dropping faster than the TSX. Now, that's real hockey.

Having said that, if, like me, you play outdoor hockey in a less than temperate climate (Edmonton, January, 9 p.m. - enough said), there are challenges that must be factored into the play. The largest of these, sometimes literally, are cracks in the ice, which are especially problematic when it's bitterly cold - the ice is brittle and so am I, the aging and overconfident athlete who no longer possesses the flexibility to adjust to sudden, or any, changes in direction.

I haven't found the scientific evidence to prove this (because I haven't looked) but there's also something about serious cold that turns the cracks the same colour as the rest of the ice. There's no contrast. There you are, gliding along, chasing the play, no one hassling you, and then your blade finds a chasm and you pitch forward like a felled giraffe, limbs akimbo. Outdoor ice, I can assure you, raises a colourful bruise.

Sometimes the bruises arise because of the chaotic nature of shinny. We play old-time pond hockey, or river hockey, as it's also known. These are terms coaches use to describe a game rampaging all over the ice with no regard for defence, where scoring is king, where the primary - the only - point is to have as much fun as possible. Imagine a dozen hyenas chasing a wounded antelope as it darts hither and thither and you'll pretty much pick up on the pattern of our play. Defence is played by those too tired to chase the puck. It's a hell of a lot of fun, but it's all too common to become collateral damage in the chaos. You've got to keep your head up.

A major challenge in shinny is often the weather. For instance, you may think that when it's minus 20 and you're playing for 90 minutes and you realize you've lost the feeling in your fingertips, you'd be worried about frostbite. You'd be right about that. Still, there are precautions you can take, such as wearing windproof running gloves inside your hockey gloves. This doesn't help much, but it's better than bare skin against hockey-glove leather that's about as supple as a football. There's no real option here; wearing only ski gloves marks you in ways too cruel to itemize.

Anyway, by the end of a good game of shinny, you should be sweating from the exertion, though if you stop too long on an especially cold night, your tuque will freeze to your head.

The real problem with cold-weather shinny is not your fingers, it's your toes. Skates are no longer made to keep your tootsies toasty, and in fact most are designed to disperse heat rather than to husband it. You just need skates big enough to allow toe-wiggling as soon as you realize you haven't had sensation below your ankles since you took your street shoes off. The word "gangrene" should not be passing through your mind while playing shinny.

But despite the challenges, the rewards are great. Late at night, when the game has wrapped up and you're pushing the nets off the ice, when the sweat is still warming you to the core, when a group of weary veterans are flush with endorphins (as well as anti-inflammatories and painkillers), it's best then to stop and look up. On cold, clear nights, the stars blink at you through the mist of your heavy breath. The air has never been fresher. You feel as if you could play for another couple of hours. You're at peace.

To say it's magical doesn't even come close to doing it justice. These are the moments one lives for. And no matter how hard you look, you just aren't going to find that indoors.

Curtis Gillespie's most recent book is the novel Crown Shyness.