Holland — If you woke up tomorrow morning and discovered you were a millionaire, what would you do? Pay off your debts? Buy a bigger house? Go on a semi-permanent vacation, preferably somewhere warm with copious sand and alcohol? Or would you just give it all away?
Frank Kraai was 86 when he learned he was rich. One day, out of the blue, Kraai, a retired teacher from Holland, discovered that he apparently had $1.1 million burning a hole in his pocket. And what, you may wonder, did Kraai decide to do with his newfound wealth?
He gave it away.
He donated all of it to help the city of Holland build a state-of-the-art, 14,000-foot ice park right downtown. Holland had wanted a park like this for almost a century, but it wasn’t until Kraai donated his savings that it became real.
Holland’s ice park opened in 2025, and it’s just as wonderful as everything else in Holland. It’s new, clean, well-maintained, and expectedly idyllic. There’s a long track—an ice path—that curves in, out, around to make a loop. On a Wednesday night in January kids, adults, and even older people skated ‘round and ‘round under a freezing black sky. Some speeding with grace, others holding on for dear life, grasping the guardrails just to stay stable. Next to the loop is a curling sheet (the official name for what us laymen might call a curling rink—I had to look it up). When I was there it was occupied by a group of five or six people slowly sliding those mysterious stones across the slippery floor.
There are lockers to store your things, skates to rent when you don’t have your own, concessions if you are hungry, a covered pavilion with picnic tables to put on your gear, and fires lit around the park with chairs close by if you just want to listen to the sound of the skates cutting the ice nearby. There is only so much room on the ice, and when I was at the park, there were no spots left. “SOLD OUT SESSION,” the sign at the entrance to the park read. It’s a popular place in the depths of winter.
There are a few parallels between Holland’s ice park and their heated streets and sidewalks. Both began with generous donations. Frank Kraai in the case of the ice park, Edgar Prince in the case of the streets and sidewalks. Of course, there is the shared modern achievement and technological marvel. The heated streets and sidewalks are able to melt an inch of snow per hour, providing clean walkways all winter long. The ice in the ice park is able to remain frozen and skateable even when the air temperature climbs as high as 49 degrees.
Both are pro-social inventions which get people out and about, together and active, during the most anti-social and isolating months of the year. And both are there to benefit the community and only exist because people like Kraai and Prince cared enough about their town and the people in it to donate to it.
How do we adapt to the cold? It’s one of the threads woven through all the columns I’ve written this winter. I didn’t plan it that way, it’s just been on my mind, and reminders of it have been evident almost everywhere I’ve visited.
Coping with and enjoying life in the cold requires planning. It takes more gear, more preparation, and long-term thinking. In the summer, you can just walk outside and the nice weather is nice enough to make you feel happy. If you want to do something you can just do it. In the winter, you just can’t do that same thing. The weather doesn’t automatically make you happy, and if you don’t have the right gear you can’t even get outside in a pleasant way. Summer is nice inherently. Winter is only as nice as we make it.
And that’s what the ice park is about. It’s about battling the winter, or at least subduing it. It’s about creating a space which facilitates an enjoyable life during a different time of the year. That might sound a little simple or a little dry, but that’s the key to enjoying the darkest months of the year. It’s the difference between a winter hellscape and a winter wonderland.
There is something stunning and poetic about walking along the heated sidewalks during a heavy snowstorm and coming up right to the ice park where the ice will remain frozen all the way into March when the snow is all but gone. Both modern inventions doing completely different things, one hot and one cold, conquering the misery of the tundra, turning a winter hellscape into a winter wonderland, and making winter as nice as you can make it for the people of Holland.
O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X @NecktieSalvage.
