One reason for building our place here on Birch Lake was to be able to experience a lake in all seasons. Most of my time up north had been in summer; here and there a weekend in autumn, never in winter. Now we spend about half our days here, year-round. This has been an interesting winter on the frozen water.
When we left here for home earlier in January, about eight inches of snow covered the lake. The snow had been trampled by ice anglers, packed down by snowmobiles and four-wheel-drive vehicles, laced with the tracks of skiers and snowshoers (and dented with my own bootprints and Freckles' paw marks).
While we were away for a couple of weeks, a warm spell melted the snow down. Then came a few inches of new powder, followed by a windy spell. By the time we arrived again four days ago, the lake was nearly a blank canvas, an expanse of white mottled with patches of bare blue-black ice.
On that whitescape I walked yesterday (with Freckles) and today (alone). The snow was a bit crusty in places, and there the wind had carved out miniature mesas. Looking down on them reminded me of flying over the desert landscape of Arizona or New Mexico, the wind having sculpted from snow in a few days what it took millions of years to fashion out of sandstone.
Most interesting, though, were the patches of bare ice, most of them no bigger than the surface of a summer swim raft. Every one was different, some showing large bubbles below the surface, others nearly opaque blue-white, one spot so clear I could see all the way through an imagine looking at the bottom, in that place (I know from the lake map) about 25 feet below below my boots. A stress crack in that area revealed an ice thickness of at least 10 inches, allaying any fears I may have had for my safety, standing over such deep water.
I walked from one of these bare, irregular ice patches to the next as if connecting dots. Freckles soon learned to stay on the snow to avoid losing control of his legs; I stepped a little carefully on the ice myself, knowing the damage a hard fall could do to my 60-year-old frame.
It's magical seeing the lake this way. One day I need to learn how to punch holes in this ice and catch a few walleyes for dinner. Right now, though, I wish it would snow. We're in a winter drought, and the land needs moisture. At this latitude we still have two months to make up the shortfall.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Stacks of silver coins
It's been said that Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow -- that they live with it so intimately they distinguish its every texture, form, nuance and variation. Well, it turns out the first part of that sentence, about the hundreds of words, isn't true, but I'll bet the other half is: to the keen observer, snow isn't simply white stuff.
So it can be with ice, specifically lake ice. Here on Birch Lake near Harshaw, warm weather back a week or so melted some of the 6- to 8-inch cover we had going into the New Year. Some new light snow has fallen since then, but the wind has moved it around, sweeping scattered patches bare. Looking out from the living room window, I find myself wanting to go take a close look and those bare spots.
Ever since I was a kid, skating on the frozen river near my home in Two Rivers, I've enjoyed examining ice. I remember glorious days when friends and I skated on ice clear as a sheet of glass. I've enjoyed such days with my kids, too, gliding along, looking down on rocks and gravel, exploring tangles of sunken branches, skating right atop a small school of redhorse suckers swimming at full speed, trying to flee in fright.
The features of the ice itself were fascinating, too -- the cracks that revealed its thickness; rippled, washboard areas where wind kept the ice from freezing smooth, translucent patches where an incoming spring mixed and stirred the water.
What I liked (and still like) best were the stacks of coins. Have you seen this? The ice is clear, several inches thick, and there's a stack of silver-white bubbles fixed in it, each the size of a quarter or half-dollar, an eighth-inch or so apart. How does this happen? Well, you generally see this over shallow water. There has to be a source of air, such as a plant still respiring down on the bottom and sending up oxygen, or something in the mud decaying and releasing bubbles of gas.
One cold night a skin of ice forms over the lake. The next day the sun shines through and whatever process is at work sends up tiny bubbles that collect against the ice's underside, forming one larger bubble, flat like a coin. The next cold night makes the ice a little thicker and traps that bubble in its matrix. The next day another bubble forms. And so it goes. The result is purely beautiful, especially when struck by a low sun from east or west.
Next time out on your lake (if it's not covered by snow), look closely at the ice. You'll discover a richness and variety much like what the Eskimos surely have come to see in snow.
So it can be with ice, specifically lake ice. Here on Birch Lake near Harshaw, warm weather back a week or so melted some of the 6- to 8-inch cover we had going into the New Year. Some new light snow has fallen since then, but the wind has moved it around, sweeping scattered patches bare. Looking out from the living room window, I find myself wanting to go take a close look and those bare spots.
Ever since I was a kid, skating on the frozen river near my home in Two Rivers, I've enjoyed examining ice. I remember glorious days when friends and I skated on ice clear as a sheet of glass. I've enjoyed such days with my kids, too, gliding along, looking down on rocks and gravel, exploring tangles of sunken branches, skating right atop a small school of redhorse suckers swimming at full speed, trying to flee in fright.
The features of the ice itself were fascinating, too -- the cracks that revealed its thickness; rippled, washboard areas where wind kept the ice from freezing smooth, translucent patches where an incoming spring mixed and stirred the water.
What I liked (and still like) best were the stacks of coins. Have you seen this? The ice is clear, several inches thick, and there's a stack of silver-white bubbles fixed in it, each the size of a quarter or half-dollar, an eighth-inch or so apart. How does this happen? Well, you generally see this over shallow water. There has to be a source of air, such as a plant still respiring down on the bottom and sending up oxygen, or something in the mud decaying and releasing bubbles of gas.
One cold night a skin of ice forms over the lake. The next day the sun shines through and whatever process is at work sends up tiny bubbles that collect against the ice's underside, forming one larger bubble, flat like a coin. The next cold night makes the ice a little thicker and traps that bubble in its matrix. The next day another bubble forms. And so it goes. The result is purely beautiful, especially when struck by a low sun from east or west.
Next time out on your lake (if it's not covered by snow), look closely at the ice. You'll discover a richness and variety much like what the Eskimos surely have come to see in snow.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
What the ice reveals
Ice mostly obscures a lake, especially once snow falls on top of it. There's about eight inches of snow on Birch Lake now, not quite enough for snowshoes (at that depth it's easier walking without them than with). I enjoy near-daily walks along the lake perimeter with Freckles, our springer spaniel. One morning I left him at home (to his considerable protest) and walked all the way around the 180-acre lake by myself, talking no shortcuts, following the shoreline of every bay and inlet. It took about 90 minutes, and that's a good workout when one is wearing pack boots and shuffling through snow.
One thing I didn't do that day was follow Seed Creek, which flows out of Birch Lake and winds its way through a swampy woods to little Seed Lake. In liquid-water seasons I had tried taking a canoe down the creek, just to see how far I could go, hoping ultimately to reach the lake and find a secret back-in fishing ground. As it turned out, I coundn't go far, because although the water was deep enough to float the canoe, the creek was barely 10 feet wide, skinnier than that in many places, and tree branches and logs blocked the way. Now, in January, I thought maybe I could walk the creek ice to Seed Lake.
So I took Freckles out on his leash, and we walked the half-mile or so from our frontage to the creek outlet and started downstream into the woods. The creek flows slowly and so had frozen over reasonably solid. Animal tracks criss-crossed the snow -- some obvious deer hoof prints, once in a while the stitchings of a mouse, here the belly-drag of an otter, in other places markings I couldn't identify (footfalls in powder snow don't leave the well-defined tracks one finds in mud or soft sand).
We strolled along, around bend after bend; now and then I had to push aside branches that Freckles slipped neatly beneath, The ice often creaked under me; I wasn't too concerned because I knew from my canoe foray that if it gave way, the water probably wouldn't go past my boot tops. Deeper into the woods we wandered, stopping now and then to listen to the silence, staying still sometimes just long enough to hear the circle of life start closing in around us, chickadees appearing deep in the trees.
Then we reached a stretch where the ice looked unstable -- barren of snow, lumpy and translucent. There being no easy "portage" around this section (the brush on both sides was thick), I decided to turn for home. Not long after we started back, Freckles broke through. He quickly sloshed out and back up onto the ice, the water having just wet his belly fur. What I wondered was: Why had the ice held my 240 pounds but not my 45-pound dog? He must have simply found a weak spot. I headed directly back to the cabin to get Freckles to a warm place.
So we never made it to Seed Lake, and the creek's course is so twisted I don't even have a good idea how close we came. We did enjoy a visit to a tranquil place I am sure few others ever see, a place of tall, bare trees towering over scrubby brushland, of deep silence, of mystery, a place that wouldn't have been revealed to us if not for winter's ice. Perhaps a few subzero days will freeze the creek harder and allow my walking partner and me to complete the trek to Seed Lake.
One thing I didn't do that day was follow Seed Creek, which flows out of Birch Lake and winds its way through a swampy woods to little Seed Lake. In liquid-water seasons I had tried taking a canoe down the creek, just to see how far I could go, hoping ultimately to reach the lake and find a secret back-in fishing ground. As it turned out, I coundn't go far, because although the water was deep enough to float the canoe, the creek was barely 10 feet wide, skinnier than that in many places, and tree branches and logs blocked the way. Now, in January, I thought maybe I could walk the creek ice to Seed Lake.
So I took Freckles out on his leash, and we walked the half-mile or so from our frontage to the creek outlet and started downstream into the woods. The creek flows slowly and so had frozen over reasonably solid. Animal tracks criss-crossed the snow -- some obvious deer hoof prints, once in a while the stitchings of a mouse, here the belly-drag of an otter, in other places markings I couldn't identify (footfalls in powder snow don't leave the well-defined tracks one finds in mud or soft sand).
We strolled along, around bend after bend; now and then I had to push aside branches that Freckles slipped neatly beneath, The ice often creaked under me; I wasn't too concerned because I knew from my canoe foray that if it gave way, the water probably wouldn't go past my boot tops. Deeper into the woods we wandered, stopping now and then to listen to the silence, staying still sometimes just long enough to hear the circle of life start closing in around us, chickadees appearing deep in the trees.
Then we reached a stretch where the ice looked unstable -- barren of snow, lumpy and translucent. There being no easy "portage" around this section (the brush on both sides was thick), I decided to turn for home. Not long after we started back, Freckles broke through. He quickly sloshed out and back up onto the ice, the water having just wet his belly fur. What I wondered was: Why had the ice held my 240 pounds but not my 45-pound dog? He must have simply found a weak spot. I headed directly back to the cabin to get Freckles to a warm place.
So we never made it to Seed Lake, and the creek's course is so twisted I don't even have a good idea how close we came. We did enjoy a visit to a tranquil place I am sure few others ever see, a place of tall, bare trees towering over scrubby brushland, of deep silence, of mystery, a place that wouldn't have been revealed to us if not for winter's ice. Perhaps a few subzero days will freeze the creek harder and allow my walking partner and me to complete the trek to Seed Lake.
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