Ice

The details of the story are not clear to me, even now. They were never clear to me. The day that my uncle broke through the ice on his snowmobile near Conference Point was a day that I heard about often, but mostly in mere mention and rarely in detail. We knew the story well enough. The ice was dangerous. My uncle fell through it, and was rescued. It was a miracle of sorts, to hear the story told. But we should live our lives hopeful of miracles but never counting on them. That is why we do not jump from the top of a tall building and hope to land on something soft. That is why we buckle our seat belts and why we don’t bungee jump with the discount guy with the broken leg. And this is why we stay off the ice.

Ice is fragile, we’re told. It is shifty, untrustworthy, like that guy in the track suit who sits at Starbucks all day. We are not to count on it because it is always changing, always dangerous. When ice is covered in snow, it’s even more difficult to judge. Is that ice thick under that snow? Or is there a soft spot lurking under that snow, waiting for our feet or our tires or the front skis of our gas powered sleds? There’s never any way to know, which is why we are always to approach ice with caution. Whether it’s the ice that we crushed off the snowy ledges on our late winter walks home from school, or the ice that forms over shallow puddles in the late fall, we know that ice is fragile and weak.

I know these things, and I’ve been warned of these things, but when I look out today at that ice I’m unconvinced. The ice that I see has suffocated the lake. It has taken over, and when I look out now I see small fishing houses, and snowmobiles, and trucks. There is one guy drilling a hole in the ice, and I’m guessing he’ll be at that for quite some time. The ice, this thing that I’ve been told is so fragile and so dangerous, is thick. I would guess it is impenetrable, and according to local lore it is as much as 24″ thick in many locations. As a child, I can remember my dad taking his chainsaw to the ice and cutting a block of it free from the rest. We put that block in our basement freezer for some reason. That block was big and glorious and clear, but it was not 24″ thick.

It was warm yesterday. Sunny, too. It was one of those days that we usually have during winter, except that this winter it was the first day of its kind. On that day, snow melted from roofs and from roads, and my gravel driveway turned to a most unpleasant soup. I sat in a South Shore Club house for much of the afternoon, and enjoyed hearing the steady rush of snow and ice as they slipped from the steep slate roof. While most things melted, the lake today looks like it did yesterday which looks a lot like it did the day before. It is still there, still thick, still bright white and not at all entertained. It is a serious cloak of ice, and I would wager it isn’t going anywhere for a long, long time.

Remember last spring? The ice was out “late”. It was early April before the last ice turned back to the waves, and we all feared that piers would be going in later than usual. Then, on Memorial Day, there were plenty of piers not yet installed, and we had been proven right- the piers would be late. But that was last year, a year when the ice froze about when it is supposed to and went away mostly on schedule as well. What of this year? What of a year when the ice came early and keeps promising that it will be here until very late? A glance at the 14 day forecast reveals mostly cold temperatures, which means the ice will not be compromised for at least that spell. What will March bring? Will it bring warm winds and rain, or will it bring more of this winter?

There is no way to know, of course. But all we need to know today is that there is lots and lots of thick ice, and it likely has its eyes set on April. Most of it.