Location Taken: Caseville, Michigan
Time Taken: January 2011
Along the shore of the Saginaw Bay, the large bay between the “thumb” and “index finger” of the lower peninsula that makes Michigan look like a mitten, the ice piles up against the shore in large sheets.
Or at least it does at my Grandma Schram’s place. She’s one of the few people in her elderly community who just stays at home all year long rather than flee to Florida or something for the winter.
I don’t visit her often. You can tell just because I think of my Grandmothers as “Grandma” and “Grandma Schram”. The grandfathers are a lot easier to tell apart since my Dad’s Dad died when I was a little kid, so it’s just “Grandpa”.
Still, once a year at Christmas we go and visit. And the frozen ice is frequently all the way to the horizon when we get there. She lives right on the shore, with beach access and everything, but I’ve only gone swimming there a bare handful of times, none within the last decade and a half. The water’s just a bit too cold and, well, solid for that.
I have gone out on the lake multiple times, though. That’s quite literal, by the way. If the ice is out to the horizon, the stuff by the shore is solid enough to walk on without much worry. We still have to be careful when walking there, though, as the surface is quite uneven. The freezing water gets pushed up onto the ice sheet in odd patterns, and there are frequent ridges to climb over.
As the lake freezes, the usual pattern is for a ridge to form for a bit at the various sandbars. The deeper water sheds its heat a lot slower than shallow water, so the ice will reach a sandbar and not be able to establish itself further until the temperature drops some more. The ridges are just as perilous as the rough surface, with the added problem of having to climb them. This one’s not too bad, but some of the others are five feet tall or so, with steep sides.
There’s no real purpose for going out on the ice. There’s nothing you learn from it that you can’t tell from land. And all you see by going out there is more water between you and the horizon. The joy is in the challenge.
Maybe that’s why the only other people I see out there are snowmobilers running their machines quickly across the surface. They don’t go for this rough ice, mind you. They’re on the half-frozen stuff at the edge of the ice. If you go fast enough, you won’t sink, and it’s probably quite similar to jet skiing on water. Which, mind you, is also a common thing there. Probably the same people too…
