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Ice skating is to walking as singing is to talking: Both are elongated, more graceful takes on everyday activities most people can manage on a basic level but few master.Yet you need not execute a Hamill camel or nail a triple-toe- loop to enjoy the sport.

Ice skating also is a nostalgia- inducing activity with the power to transport a person back to childhood — precisely the case for Anna Taylor on a recent Sunday afternoon as she looked across frozen Evergreen Lake.

“I’ve been coming here for 40 years,” said Taylor. “Ever since I could walk.”

A resident of Wheat Ridge, Taylor first came to Evergreen Lake with her parents, Ukrainian immigrants.

“We came up three or four times every year. We used to park right at the edge of the lake,” said Taylor, pointing to an area now protected as wetlands with a boardwalk threading through bulrushes. “They had big parking logs, and we sat on them to put our skates on. It was always windy and always cold, but we had a ball.”

Evergreen Lake’s boathouse, built in the 1930s, once served as a warming hut. Today, a large, quintessentially Colorado log lodge with a stone foundation welcomes skaters to rest on wooden benches, hone their blades or thaw by the massive, stone fireplace.

Back in the day, Taylor’s resourceful mother packed homemade chicken-noodle soup and filled a Thermos with a frost- busting beverage: hot tea, lemon, honey and whiskey.

Taylor had driven her two children and a Thermos of tea to Evergreen Lake. As she sat on a bench outside the lodge, she sipped and reminisced.

“After my parents spent an hour patiently getting our skates on, they would skate together with their hands crossed in front and in back, the way skaters do,” Taylor said.

“Skating really gets the blood moving, and for me, it’s freedom. I have two artificial hips, and when I’m skating, moving is so effortless.”

Though the metro area offers a lot of ice skating options, Taylor makes the effort to drive to Evergreen Lake.

“Here, you feel like you get away from the city. I look up and see the scenery and the blue, beautiful sky — it’s heaven,” she said.

“Ice skating can be intimidating because of the falling and the cold, but don’t be a wimp. Get out there.”

But Taylor and her kids wouldn’t get out on Evergreen Lake’s rink that day. Skating was canceled because of poor ice conditions, the result of several days of unseasonably warm weather. There are pluses to skating on natural bodies of water — but nature needs to cooperate.

At the lake’s edge, below a railing fashioned from hockey sticks, a muskrat nibbled grass. Ice fishermen stooped over holes bored into the frozen lake. The sun, low in the midday sky, cast long shadows on foothills and forests. And despite a sign that read “No street shoes on ice,” dozens of people and several dogs shuffled around the rink partitioned by orange pylons and linear mounds of snow.

“We’re going to go to Belmar,” Taylor said. “It’s tiny and bumpy and lumpy, but the girls really want to skate.”

Ice skating’s origins are not clear. A University of Oxford study suggests that the earliest ice skaters hailed from southern Finland, roughly 4,000 years ago. Another source dates the oldest known pair of skates to about 3,000 B.C. Found at the bottom of a Swiss lake, the skates used large animal femur bones for blades.

Dr. Christopher LaFontano has seen his share of injured bones, muscles and joints over the past 10 years as a team physician for the University of Denver men’s hockey team. LaFontano emphasized that skating requires more than strong ankles.

“Anyone going out on the ice needs a strong core to maintain balance and prevent injuries,” said LaFontano, who practices at the Denver Osteopathic Center.

And while ice skating can help burn off the excess eggnog or potato latkes you may have ingested over the holidays, LaFontano offers these preventative medical tips: