I must apologize for being so preoccupied over recent days. It was one week ago today when I glanced at the Lake Geneva Regional News and first learned that the Walworth Town Planning Commission had voted 5-0 to approve a conceptual development plan that would turn the rural town of Walworth into a congested extension Shodeen Development Group’s hometown in Kane County. The vote was taken without a single peep of community involvement, without a single shred of evidence that shows how egregious the initial mistake was, and without a single concern for upholding the zoning laws of this county. I’ve been fighting it ever since, and the portion of my brain that thinks of things to write about has been as clogged as those proposed streets. Please continue to share the Ruining of Walworth post with your friends and family and anyone who is concerned about the future of Walworth County. For now, this:
Geneva Lake isn’t going to freeze this year. Even though it is still meteorological fall and not at all yet real winter, it’s late enough in December that the ruling is in. No ice this winter. Geneva Bay might freeze during some cold snap that will assuredly come in January or February, and Williams Bay may ice up to Gage Marine, but the vast majority of this lake will not see ice over this winter. You can carve that in stone, though it would be easier to carve it in ice, but as I mentioned, there won’t be any of that lying around.
Geneva has gone iceless a few other times. The 2001-2002 winter never brought us ice. 1997-1998 was an El Nino winter, and we didn’t freeze then, either. 1997 wasn’t that long ago, but I can’t remember a bit of it. I sold real estate that winter, and in the years before this blog and before any pattern of sales, I’d sit in my office and wonder what it was I should do. I wore a shirt and tie then, I tried so hard. There was a boutique next to my office then, and I figured that the men would want something to do while their wives and girlfriends shopped for trinkets. So I spray painted a big piece of plywood with: “BEARS GAME ON INSIDE”. No one ever came in to watch, and it’s a good thing they didn’t, because my television was an old tube TV and the reception was scratchy. How embarrassing that entire winter was, both for me, and for ice.
The 2001-2002 winter is one that I can’t remember, either. I was recently married then, and 9-11 had just occurred and left us preoccupied with thoughts of war and revenge, with scenes of burning buildings and horror. I don’t remember doing anything special that winter, though I do know I went on my honeymoon to Hawaii in September and then in December I surprised my new wife with a vacation to Florida. I know now that I completely ruined any positive response from any spontaneous vacation from then until now, and from now until I die. You can’t take your new wife on vacation in September and then take her again in December, because by February she’s disappointed in you because you didn’t take her to Fiji. This was my error that winter, and the lake never froze.
This winter, it’s not going to freeze either. The good that comes from this is tangible. There will be far more fish in the lake next summer. The ice fishermen, if not able to drill holes and sit on upside down buckets, won’t be cleaning out hundreds of thousands of panfish as they would in a normal, frozen winter. They won’t be jigging for lake trout and harvesting 100 or more over a winter season. There will be far more fish next year, because the fish will rest this winter, unmolested and free of the baited hook. As there will be no action on the lake this winter, less trash will end up in the lake. Nothing will get lost in the snow and melt into the lake in early April. The lake will be free of trash and free of fishermen and next summer we’ll be swimming far earlier than normal.
The bad that comes from this is also tangible. Though Geneva doesn’t struggle with weed issues like Delavan and every other lake in the area, it does have seaweed, because it’s a lake. Without ice and snow cover, light reaches those weed beds all winter, and the growth of those weeds never entirely ceases. A thick cover of ice and snow blocks the light, and in a heavy cover winter the seaweed will die, and it will die hard. This year, it won’t, so next summer we’ll be swimming earlier, surrounded by more fish, but also with a few more weeds to contend with.
I’ll look back at this winter in another decade, and I’ll hopefully remember that the ice never came. With any luck, I’ll also remember this winter as the start of when Walworth County took back control of its land, and preserved its farming heritage while beating back the developer’s plow. I hope and pray I can remember this winter fondly.