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.