BEACH ICE

Lake Michigan has over 80% ice cover. I was here on the beach last week on a warm, sunny day and I was comfortable as a spring afternoon. It’s supposed to be wet and wavy, even when it’s cold but the lake-scape is stiff and rigid, with hard, crunchy convolutions growing up out of the deep, stretching out as far as the eye can see. 

Yesterday was clear and cold, like it's supposed to be and the edge on the wind made you want to look away. In all the world, Duane Watson is my best friend and yesterday we went to see the ice. He teaches biology at Allendale High School, where I retired some 13 years ago. He took an impromptu survey among his students and none of them had been to the lake shore this winter to see the ice. He scolded them for it; it may be a long time before it freezes like this again. Then he realized that he hadn’t been either, so he invited me to go with him to check out the ice. He said he wasn’t going to go out on it, just look through the glass and marvel at nature’s handiwork. 

The view from the road was awful so he parked in the lot at Bil-Mar Restaurant. We had to get out; couldn’t see over the snow heaps and started down toward the water’s edge. I took a few photos and looked up; he was out on the ice, walking away. When I caught up I said, “I thought you weren’t going to walk out on the ice.” It was a no-brainer; how do you, not walk on the ice? Looking back, we could see the top few inches of snow fence, sticking out of the snow just a few feet from where waves lap up in July. “How deep do you think it is here?” he asked. I figured it would be 6 or 8 ft deep but crunchy snow on top of the ice made it feel like the beach. Another hundred meters and the ice turned up at a steep angle. 

That was when the lunar syndrome kicked in and I couldn’t miss the metaphor, “It’s like being on Mars.” Duane laughed and we made our way down the other side. It was a miniature mountain range, like the Andes of Chile, 150 meters off shore, created by ice and wave action.  You couldn’t see north of the lighthouse but you didn’t have to. The jagged, icy discontinuity ran all the way north to Mackinaw, 200 miles up the shore. “Ain’t it great?” he said, talking to himself. I took more photos and saw he was going out onto the broken ice. It was a jumble that had fractured, shifted and refrozen, like a boulder field of ice. Several crevices went down a few feet to clear ice. It looked like one might fall through so we pulled up a big chunk and slammed it down on the thin spot. It clunked like a concrete block on the driveway. Not to worry about falling through. 

It was cold and I wore the wrong hat. After all, we weren’t going out on the ice. Heading back we got a view seldom seen. It was the shore line from a quarter mile out in the lake. I asked Duane, “How long has it been since someone walked on water?” He didn’t know, thought maybe we were the first since JC but all the foot prints in the snow suggested it wasn’t special anymore. I’m heading off for South Korea next week. Next time I’m in Grand Haven we’ll all be bare-foot and shorts and the beach will be full of kite flyers.