The lid goes on

If you wonder what happens in your lake after the ice forms, the answer is: Not a great deal. Sure, fish still bite, some more readily than others (bass being among the reluctant).

But in general, things get quiet, still and dark down there under that translucent, snow-covered sheet. The three inputs that make your lake so very much alive in high summer – light, heat and oxygen – are much less abundant.

Only cold-blooded creatures spend winter in the water (though foraging otters may come and go through near-shore holes in the ice). In temperatures not much above freezing, fish move around sluggishly; reptiles and amphibians stay mostly still or outright hibernate. Aquatic insects winter in the bottom sediments.

Except to the extent that it receives inflows from a stream or groundwater springs, your lake becomes essentially a sealed container. Very little oxygen gets in. The deeper the snow cover, the less light can penetrate, and the less oxygen plants produce from photosynthesis.

And vegetative life itself is limited. The rooted aquatic plants (weeds if you will) have long since died back. The populations of plankton – the tiny critters and one-celled algae that form the base of the lake food chain – have plummeted. Whatever oxygen was dissolved in your lake’s water at the time ice formed steadily declines through the winter.

If you’re able to look through clear ice to the bottom, you may see places where occasional bubbles of gas issue from the muck and rise until they meet the ice cover. But biochemical activity and life in general slow to a crawl. For fish and other lake creatures, it becomes a question of survival until spring.

Imagine what it’s like down there, under the ice. There’s barely a sound. Maybe the noise of a roaring wind penetrates sometimes. But there’s no sound of wave action. No splashing as eagles strike carrion fish on the surface. No swirling noises as loons dive down to fish. No whine of outboard engines. Just unbroken silence.

On windless days and nights, before the snowmobile trails open, it’s a lot like that up here on the surface, too. It’s a time to treasure the quiet, to feel life’s pace slow down, to enjoy a sort of suspended animation that lasts until spring.

If it feels miraculous to see the earth burst forth with life as the weather finally turns warm, how much more so to ponder the way lake life blooms again when at long last the ice recedes.