Issues → January/February 2009 → Interact → 10 Things to Do →

Classic: Seasons of Ice

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(page 4 of 4)

In the town, though, ice-out had to wait until you could put a boat into the lake at the dock behind the post office, and could travel to the head or the lake, no mailer how many twists and turns were needed to dodge ice floes. People wagered small sums, usually ten dollars, on when that would happen. They'd keep a watch on the south wind that would jam the ice together. Tom and I would take his canoe and go on long rides between the chunks and islands that formed natural canals.

I would have liked it if the ice had gone out with a final shudder beneath a star-filled night. But there were only a few days of warm drizzle and the fog that held the warmth close to the lake. On the last day or April a wind blew from the north, breaking the last floes apart. They rode across the lake with white caps whipping at their heels, and within a few hours people from town came down the road to watch the first open, blue water of the year, not minding the slightly acrid odor of lake-bottom water now rising to the top.

Soon the lake shore filled with smelt fishermen, released from winter bondage of their own, who had driven for miles to fish this lake, one of the best smelting spots in the lake. Tom had heard from his parents, his uncles and cousins. Soon they would fill the shoreline, and their motorboats would hum across the lake. The lanterns of the smelters played out over the lake, and even as Tom and I dipped our own nets silently into the still-icy waters along the shore, we could hear the faraway shouts of revelry.