Crystalline glory

I’m remembering an earlt December a few years ago when quirks in the weather worked a miracle on Birch Lake. In the early ice season there’s often a push and pull, cold days firming and thickening the ice, warm days halting or setting back progress. During a warm spell in that December, a spring to the west down our shoreline opened a large oval-shaped patch of water, about twice the size of a football field. After a couple of calm, cold nights it refroze. For several days it didn’t snow, and we were left with a sheet of virginal ice, not quite glass-clear, but transparent enough to reveal the features of the bottom. At no more than two inches thick, the ice wasn’t to be trusted, so I spent time on my knees or lying flat to gaze into the lake. A long look taken this way comes close to an interlude of meditation.

I’m used to observing the underwater world up close through the lens of a swim mask, while snorkeling. Seeing it through new ice is perhaps more rewarding, because the opportunity is rare. When it comes the water is clearer, the algae having died back and the silt particles settled. On that day I wished I still had my ice skates; I gave up that activity a decade ago. Skating on crystalline ice is a wondrous adventure, gliding along, watching the silent, sunken world pass beneath you, regretting the scratches you leave behind.

Only once in the ten years we’ve lived here has clear ice formed without snow coming soon to obscure it. Rare is the time when conditions conspire to open a picture window to Birch Lake’s secrets.