Winter Lake, Open Book

What a difference a day makes. This morning I awoke to the lake as grey as the sky. The far shore blended into the horizon. Fog enveloped my world, closing me off from my closest neighbors. Yesterday, in the still visible snowmobile tracks, a yellow dog and her puppy trotted around the bend past the Johnson’s big house and up the bank to Preachers’ Grove. But overnight, the air warmed and the ice turned blackish. The tracks faded, and so are the stories.  Much like Tony Hillerman’s legendary Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police, I knew the impressions could be read like the printed page. The winter lake is an open book of changing stories.

Stories are written in many forms. Only weeks earlier on a cold January morning, a sundog seemed so close I reached out my hand to touch the ice-crystal halo. It beckoned me, pulled me toward the lake. “Fee-bee, fee-bee”: A Chickadee hopped among a bittersweet vine growing in a thicket on the bank. Orange berries bright against bare branches and snow. In the dead of winter, the frozen lake showcased a bevy of activity, a winter very much alive.

The fog lifted with the morning sun. I tramped down the hill with my skis and poles tucked under my arm. The snow squeaked beneath my boots. Then swish, swish as I skied beside snowshoe tracks and a skier’s herringbone prints. I followed their route; I wondered who these unseen winter travelers were. Like me, they skirted the open fish holes and rounded the point and headed toward the island. I turned back and skied across the loops and swirls of snowmobile tracks. I knew who made the figure-eight impressions. Matt, my teenage neighbor, and his friend powered their snowmobiles in swooping circles cutting a spaghetti pattern in the ice. The roar of engines drowned out their laughter but not their youthful exuberance.

The day continued to warm; water glistened on the ice, and the whistling wind swept over the shifting ice. Now only traces of the stories remain to be read.

First draft, March 12, 2012. Revised, July 14, 2018.