Walking on Water

 

 

Pinedale art hug - Mural on the side of an ordinary building - More art hugs follow:

 

Wind River Mountains, so snowy and distant, I wonder if I can ever reach them before spring.  Between me and them, Fremont Lake in the foothills is reachable and even walkable.  Looking like liquid with patches of white floating on its surface, most people do not venture out.     

 

Far from the shore, I see a tiny box.  It appears of human making, either by having escaped from shore and becoming locked in ice, or having been slid so far out there after the ice formed.  Too thin to walk on was my first impression, so black in color it looks almost liquid.  I had asked before coming here how thick the ice is, and was told it’s about eight inches, strong enough to walk on. And so I ventured out.  

 

Tentatively at first, held up by rigid water, I crept away from the solid shore.  So clear was the ice that I could see through it and judge its thickness.  Black ice, very slippery, like window glass, it’s blackness acquired from the deep water below, as black ice on pavement gets its color from the road below.  Cracks all around me and the sounds of cracks as they form, a symphony of musical notes.  I was in a concert hall with both visual impressions and musical accompaniment.  Deep sounds reverberating from far out on the lake, treble notes from cracking close at hand, and percussion from an occasional crack that I could see happening on stage.  

 

I felt levitated as if only air were below me, looking down into clear water and not sinking.  Within the ice I saw the full depth of the cracks, verifying its thickness of about eight inches.  All through the ice, what appeared to be bubbles of air vertical columns, as if the lake was once boiling, then suddenly froze, capturing columns of rising bubbles.  

 

I knelt down and peered into the icy depth.  A three-dimensional scene revealed itself, an artform of cracks and bubbles fixed in time, like something ancient, like fossils, animated, as if creatures had been killed in an ancient flood and only now revealed in stereo pairs of photographs viewed one by each eye.    

 

These holes could only have been bored with the auger of an ice fisherman. And now that I was far out on the lake, the thing on the ice that I had walked on water for about half a mile to see, was looking like a tent that fishermen sometimes erect for protection from the wind. 

 

The object of my walk was now clearly of human doing, and when I saw the movement of someone near it, I called out, “Hello, do you mind if I come closer?” wondering if the ice was thick enough to support two people close together.  He said it would be okay.  

 I approached a rugged-looking man, who smiled and seemed to like my admiration of his set-up and of his courage on being the only one, and not so young, out on the lake today.

 He had bored two hoes in the ice, one for his ten-pound-test fishing line and the other for his sonar.  The little device told him that the water is 76 feet deep and its temperature 22 degrees Fahrenheit.  If there had been any fish within fifty feet, it would have shown them, he said.  “Í guess you don’t expect anyone to bother you way out here” I said.  

 

“I don’t mind,” and he seemed to mean it.  “I pull my gear on that sled and use my new electric auger, have spikes on boots to keep from falling.”  Noticing the spikes on my boots, he said, “We have to be careful as we get old.”  I half resented the comment, but couldn’t keep from enjoying his warm welcome into his cold and friendly camp.  We talked of past adventures and future plans and of being more daring or laughably crazy than most. 

As I was leaving, a hundred yards away, he hollered out to me with a six-inch trout hanging from his line.  I let out a cheer and hope to see him again. 

 

Within the ice, artistic forms appear
stimulants for poets and painters
fishers of men
adventurers of many kinds

Please see maps prepared by Michael Angerman showing the places the places I stayed.

Map for the summer trip of 2020:  Michael's Map 

Map for the winter trip of 2021:   Google Map for Winter 2021