But this liquid grace masks remarkable speed, and before you know it, he's upon you, has taken the puck from you, has stolen silent through your defenses.
It's not surprising, really. Loren Kreck has been honing his hockey edge for some 32 years.
“I just hope I don't ever have to quit,” Kreck said. “Getting going is what keeps you going.”
Kreck is among a growing crowd of retirees whose senior moments include hiking and climbing and skiing and paddling and skating the Flathead Valley's wilds.
“Staying home,” he said, “was never an option. It's something you have to fight against. Your body wants to stay home, but you push yourself to go. And it feels great once you're out there.”
Out there, he said, is a world “unendingly beautiful;” “it's sort of a spiritual experience every time I get out into it. The trees, the sky, the snow, the mountains. You could never get tired of it.”
Hi Gibson would have to agree. At 75, he's still a youngster, but Gibson holds a special place as a charter member of the Over the Hill Gang. Of five founders, he said, only he and Ivan O'Neil are left.
But the group has grown, meeting weekly to hike and climb in the summer, to ski in the winter.
“It starts out as exercise and adventure,” Gibson said, “but then it becomes a good part of our social lives. Right now, everybody's up skiing.”
But not Hi Gibson. After five hip surgeries and four replacement hips, he's given up the downhill scene. He still cross-country skis, though, as long as the trails are smooth.
“I can't go scooting down a meadow anymore,” he said. “The other guys do, even the older guys, but I stick to the groomed trails.”
“We're all getting like that,” said George Ostrom. “If it's not one damn thing it's another. A new knee or a prostrate or something.”
Ostrom has probably done more to bolster the ranks of the Over the Hill Gang than anyone else, what with his books and photographs and newspaper columns. When 40 or more people show up for the pre-hike breakfast, everyone blames Ostrom.
But they also might blame demographics. And medical advances. The country is aging, with Montana quickly becoming among the grayest of states. And today's retirees are living better longer, thanks to those new knees and prostate surgeries.
Adventuresome seniors are driving a whole outdoors industry; just ask the folks at GeezerJock Magazine.
“Now, we've got a lot of kids in their 50s and 60s who are coming along,” Ostrom said. “But none of us feel like we're that old. I'm coming up on 79; I'm just barely out of puberty.”
They all point, as way of inspiration, to Ambrose Measure, a longtime Flathead Valley attorney who hiked mountains well into his 90s, until he fell from a ladder while reaching for Christmas lights.
“As a kid, I was amazed to see a 65-year-old skiing,” Ostrom said. “Well, poop, it's all relative. At 65 we were climbing mountains before we skied down them. We're still climbing mountains. Ambrose was climbing on his 90th birthday.”
Some of these guys - and gals, Ostrom said, you can't forget the gals - are skiing a couple million vertical feet a year at Big Mountain.
“It's partly physical, and partly social,” Ostrom said, “but there's also something psychological about it. You feel better. You stay in shape. You're happier. The doctor's say that's what's keeping me going, the sweating and the huffing and the puffing up all those mountains.”
He talks of days straggling off the trail after dark, of “torn clothes, all beat to hell, having lost pounds of sweat.”
He calls days like that “uplifting.”
“It's catching,” Ostrom said. “It's addictive. And it should be. When you're approaching the top of a peak, and then you step up there and the whole world opens up - it's euphoria.”
But they all agree the peak is no longer the singular destination it once was.
“By God, if we see a nice flower or a good picture, we're going to stop,” Ostrom said. “Getting to the top of the mountain is not the only goal anymore. We've matured. We're a little more laid back now, those of us who are over 70.”
“When you're young, you torture yourself to get to the top,” Kreck agreed. “As you get older, you want it to be nice and enjoyable.”
This from an 86-year-old man who cracked a rib playing hockey this year but is still out on the wild ice of Whitefish Lake at sunset, skating circles around the youngsters as a comet streaks the southern sky.
Kreck skis, both downhill and cross-country, and he hikes and he climbs and he paddles for weeks down wilderness rivers through Utah, through the Northwest Territories. Way up north, Kreck said, “that's really where the goodies are.”
Wolves and caribou and moose and grizzly bears.
“Every turn of the river brings something new.”
Just like every turn of the skate, every turn of the ski, every turn of the trail, every turn of the seasons.
“There's hardly enough time anymore,” Kreck said. “But I'm just pretty darned happy to be still doing it.”
His goal for the year is to hike and ski some local trails he hasn't explored before. After all these decades, that's getting harder all the time; “but there's always something new out there.”
Which is, in the end, what keeps these folk going.
And as for those poor folk retired onto their couches, “well, I feel sorry for them,” Kreck said. “They're really missing out on living a life.”
But Gibson says there's always hope.
“When you're out with people having fun, it keeps you young,” he said. “It's not too late to get started. It's never too late to get started. Just make up your mind to get up and go, as far as you can go.”
After all, that quiet gentleman who just stole the puck again didn't compete in his first big hockey tournament until he was 68.
“That was a long time ago,” Kreck said. “I've skated a few miles since then.”
Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at (406) 862-0324 or at mjamison@missoulian.com.
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