On Thin Ice

I grew up on a lake, a small and shallow lake. Generally, in the summer the boating traffic consisted of kayaks, canoes, windsurfers, sail boats, and row boats sometimes with an outboard engine. Occasionally, like on the Fourth of July, an illegal pontoon boat might saunter by. They were illegal because their large engines would stir up the lake's bottom, which could create problems with the underwater ecosystem. Also occasionally, a hot-shot high school lifeguard might take the park district's boat around the lake for a spin. Obnoxious, they were. Much like the snow mobilers in winter.

When the lake appeared to be frozen, Dad would first test the ice. He always made a big deal of me staying on the pier until he was sure the ice wouldn't crack. It did happen occasionally that it wasn't frozen thick enough and we'd go back inside to wait. I vaguely remember being out on the ice when I was a little kid with a small kitchen chair as my guide. My dad had played hockey back in those days and loved to skate. So I had skates for every size of my feet growing up. I was never an accomplished skater, but I could always stay upright and move forwards and backwards.

When it was snowy, we would shovel a rink. We'd go inside for some hot cocoa to warm up before putting on our skates to play. Too many times, when I got back out to the rink, a snow mobiler had viewed our heaps of displaced snow as an obstacle to play on. The ice of the rink would be ruined by the treads of their snow machines.

But one year, when I was in fifth grade, there wasn't any snow to shovel and the ice was remarkably smooth. So Dad and I decided to skate around the lake. When running around it, it is approximately a three mile distance, so skating the inner perimeter is substantially less than that. It was in January and the days weren't very long. It was getting dark. We were perhaps 3/4 of the way around the lake. The local conservation people had earlier installed an aeration device to keep the lake alive and the ecosystem balanced. In the summer, this was un-witnessable, but in the winter, the lake never froze completely all the way across anymore. Still, there were snow mobilers out and ice fisherman in their protective blue huts, so the ice felt safe.

But it was getting dark. And in January that means it was getting cold. When you're running around the outside of the lake there's not much you can do when you want to get home faster, but when you're skating, you can cut the corners. And Dad did.

"Dad, I think you're getting too close to the open water."

"No, I'm okay."

And his words, whatever they were exactly, just sort of hung there. As he went down. Through the ice. He was wearing jeans, and a dark green down winter coat.

When his head came back up, the first thing he said was, "Mary, get on your knees!"

I did.

He was splashing, trying to get back up on the ice. It kept breaking. It wasn't thick enough to support his weight, nor the added weight of the water that was now seeping into his clothing.

"Crawl to the shore! Mary, crawl to the shore!" He had shouted. Was he crazy? I wasn't going to leave him. I looked around for a rope or a branch or something. I was perhaps the crazy one. We were in the middle of the lake, there wasn't any rope anywhere. He shouted again. I think I may have moved closer to the shore, but my eyes didn't leave him.

He kept breaking off more and more ice chunks, trying to get to thicker ice. [This seemed to go one for many minutes, though it likely was only a few.] <----I need to edit this but had to remember to add it.

Eventually he did. And I am forever grateful that he had been the show-off jock that he was. Push-up champ, gymnast, martial artist, swimmer, ultramarathon runner etc., these things saved his life. If not for the upper body strength, muscle memory, and the high level of fitness he possessed, I know he would not have gotten out. I don't know if you've ever tried to pull yourself out of water under these circumstances, but it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.

While we skated the last quarter of the distance, I still felt he was too close to the open water, but he didn't fall through again. He was soaked, of course, in freezing water, skating in below-freezing air temperatures. The danger now was hypothermia. He looked very tense, as you might imagine. But, we got home okay. He got in a warm bath and everything for him turned out to be okay.

It took awhile for this to all sink in; that he quite possibly could have died. If he had been almost anyone else, he probably would have died.

And what it had meant; all the words he had shouted had been with my safety in mind.