There are a few terms which I everyone who lives here understands implicitly. Some of these terms are not well understood by fellow citizens who live in more southerly climes. Where I live, if you hear something like “the ice is out,” or “the lakes are open” it is quite obvious what the topic is.
I live in northern Minnesota, a place with a cold climate, and a lot of lakes. We interact with these two things in some strange ways. As the fall starts to turn to winter, there is a point where it gets cold enough such that the lakes will freeze over. Depending upon the weather, it may take several more weeks before the ice is thick enough to walk on top of, and even later until you could drive a car to a truck on top of the frozen lakes.
Of course this begs some rather obvious questions…
Why drive, let alone walk on top of frozen lakes? The prime reason is that here, where I live in northern Minnesota, there are a lot of lakes, and consequently, there are also a lot of fish. IN the winter, you merely need to cut a hole in the ice to lower your line into the water. Over the years ice fishing has become rather baroque, with heated ice houses which have electricity, and on some large lakes, they even have plowed streets and functional addresses (at least for pizza delivery).
Ice fishing is an odd sport, and it has a frenetic feel to it, since the season doesn’t last that long. By the beginning of March it is effectively over.
This winter sport has a much more famous summer counterpart, and this is a season which (mostly) starts in May.
There are some interesting points to consider in that we have many lakes, we also have several months of every year when we can’t do anything with them other than look at them (March, April, much of November and December). Maybe this is one of the reasons why we feel so attached to the lakes here.
So, I am sitting here today writing about our lakes…because the ice is out! This is one of the major (maybe THE major) harbingers of spring. And in a climate which has real winter, spring is one of the most important times of the year, anything which proves to us that it is here is as important.
This makes me wonder why there is so little mythology related to this…
When I was very young, it seemed as if the school year would never end, but as soon after the first week of summer vacation I couldn’t recall life in the classroom. The ice leaving the lakes is somewhat like that, I can see summer approaching, but winter is already a memory. This is why the time of the lakes opening up is so important and memorable in the scheme of things here.
