Adventure #2: Part 1 Ice Fishing for the First Time

I moved to Florida when I was twenty one because the cold in Minnesota was so unbearable I thought I would lose my mind if I stayed.  The fact that I live, now, back here is essentially a testament of how much I love my friends.  I stay in the tundra of Minnesota hell winters because I love my friends.  And that is a fact.

My parents moved us to Minnesota from New York in 1995.  I was turning sixteen.  Our first winter here was a frozen hell I will never forget.  New Yorkers know cold.  We know snow. TONS of snow.  But the cold that is here in Minnesota?  No. We did not know this sort of cold.  Never in our life had we gotten a school closing because wind chills were literally seventy below zero, until we moved here.  You think you can run out and turn on your car without wearing gloves?  Think again.  You will get frost bite. That is, if the damn thing will even start.  When it is that cold, and you step outside, not only is every ounce of revealed skin completely assaulted with icy knives, but your lungs feel like you've plunged into water and smoke.  It literally takes a few seconds to find oxygen.  You do not understand this dry cold unless you have experienced it yourself.  Take my word for it, it sucks ass. 

That first winter, bless our luck, broke a lot of records in both cold and snow.  It was our first time having horses on our own property, and we had to adapt when the pipes in the barn froze.  I would have to dress in snow pants, a vest, a jacket, thick waterproof gloves, a ski mask, a hat, a scarf, and water proof boots to feed and water the horses.  Because the pipes froze, I carried hot water from the house down to the barn every day that first winter.  I filled up four 3 gallon buckets of hot water from the basement laundry room, carried them upstairs and out into a giant Rubbermaid wheel barrow, and wheeled the water down to the barn in below zero weather.  Angry over losing my whole life in New York, this was a lot more traumatic than it should’ve been.  I cursed the cold like I would curse Satan himself.  Like, literally yelled into the dead of night air and often cried.  I tried to stay positive and thankful, but that damn cold was like a devil that stole my life and my soul and I hated it with such tenacity.  It is very strange for me to look back at that time and remember no joy, no happiness.  Just absolute grief, anger and depression.  I couldn’t blame anyone, so I blamed the damn cold. 

I grew up fishing, so that is not a new thing for me.  But never in my life have I trekked out into the middle of a giant frozen lake, drilled a hole and dropped a line.  New Yorkers ice fish, but let me tell you it is not nearly as big of a thing as it is out here.  For one, there’s not ten thousand lakes to freeze in New York.  For two, the Finger Lakes in New York are insanely deep (like 3-400 feet deep) and those suckers, at least the ones in my area, rarely if ever freeze over.  There are smaller lakes that do, and that is where most New Yorkers spend their ice fishing, but I never in my life saw a vehicle out on a frozen lake until I moved to Minnesota. 

That first year we were here we watched a handful of news reports showing four wheelers, snowmobiles and trucks that had gone through the ice and disappeared into lakes across the state.  Our first natural reaction was: These people are bleeping crazy.  To some it sounds comical, but there are deaths every winter.  This is not a sport for the faint of heart.  For the most part, the people that go through the ice are driving where they shouldn’t be driving, or driving too late in the season when that seventeen inch ice has now melted to ten.  There are precautions and smart rules to follow in this game, but there is always a risk.  I will tell you now Reader that I am glad I have done my research after my adventure instead of before, because the material I’m reading right now as I’m working on this entry is unsettling and alarming.

So in my hate of cold and ice, and my judgement on those who lost their vehicles to the powers of nature, I never in a million years would’ve predicted that I would someday embrace this insanity and be one of those people in the dead of a Minnesota winter driving across a frozen lake…