This was an email message I sent to my mother and friends
Tue 1/20/98
As most of you know (especially those of you who are my parents), I am from Georgia. I've lived in northern Illinois for a while, but I'm still pretty danged Southern inside.
Yesterday I was looking out the window of our office at the small (maybe 200 yards across and about three times as long) lake there. It's frozen and covered with snow except in long stripes bared by the wind. Ron and I saw two people walking across it, one with a bucket and one with an auger.
"Looks like someone is going to do some ice fishing," Ron said. They probably intended to, but a few minutes later we watched them walking back.
For the first time since I've lived up here I thought seriously about the fact that I'd never walked on a frozen body of water.
Those of you from colder areas may find this a bit odd, but I think those in the South can understand. Ice rarely occurred in nature where I grew up, and never thick enough to actually support a person's weight. We see people skating on lakes and ponds in movies, but we also see people falling through and dying just as often.
I realized that the idea of walking on this lake really scared me. It's been below freezing day and night for almost two weeks, dipping into the teens and even the single digits at night. I knew the ice would be a few inches thick and that there was no danger. I knew it, but I still felt fear when I thought about it.
Tonight they are predicting an additional four inches of snow, so I thought I'd better get it over with.
Today I got back to the office around four. The sun was getting low in the sky, but it was still an hour from sunset.
Nobody has shoveled the walk to the stairs, or the stairs, or the pier on the lake below the office, so I had to walk through about six or eight inches of snow to get to the lake. I wish I'd worn boots, but I'm glad I didn't wait until there was more snow.
When I got to the lake I saw many footprints. Some were people, some were dogs, some were cats, and some, along the shore, were bunnies (the rabbit prints look something like they were made with a wooden slingshot pressed into the snow).
I was actually feeling a little shaky as I stepped out onto the lake. The surface was as solid as I expected it to be, but I still felt some apprehension.
This didn't fade at all as I walked across the lake and along the far shore, particularly when I walked past areas where the snow was gone and the ice was showing, and especially when I walked over cracks. I was feeling a bit more comfortable as I walked back, even though I had followed other tracks on the way over but was blazing my own trail on the return.
I stopped halfway back to clear a large C in the snow. It will be gone tomorrow.
That's it. It wasn't anything that anyone who lives in the northern part of the country hasn't done a hundred times. It was just a weird new thing for me.
love, craig