MINNEAPOLIS _ Given the early arrival of cold weather this winter, Wendell Diller, his wife, Galina, and I expected the ice to be thicker than at this time in recent years. It was. But I still broke through, and, as usual, unexpectedly.
This was the other day. The temperature was in the mid-teens and the three of us were in the river backwaters that divide Minnesota and Wisconsin, hoping to score a Christmas goose or two.
The trip is an annual affair made possible only after the ice cover on most of the water we cross is thick enough to support our weight. Eventually we also encounter open water and when we do we climb into a canoe that we pull atop the ice on a sled.
The canoe is fitted with a homemade outrigger and it's important if the ice breaks that we are alongside its outrigger side. That way if the water is deep enough to crest our wader tops we can hold on to the canoe and keep ourselves dry. Leveraging the outrigger's stability, we can also climb into the canoe, albeit while creating a sort of clown show of flailing arms and legs.
"It's a beautiful morning, but I don't expect to see many geese," Wendell said as we shuffled across the ice in the morning's half-light.
Wendell and Galina had scouted the area a couple of days previously, and the big birds were mostly no-shows.
"At the very least, we'll eat a good breakfast," I said.
As likely as Wendell or I to somer�sault an overflying honker, Galina's specialty nevertheless on these exploits is cooking pancakes from thick, walnut-stuffed batter she brings from home. A native of Siberia, she creates Siberian-grade flapjacks.
"I'll get a fire going," she said when we arrived at a spit of land cluttered with enough willows to camouflage our presence from above.
Twenty yards distant lay an ice-free, cigar-shaped riverway, and after stashing the canoe and sled, Wendell and I set up a handful of decoys on the water's frozen perimeter. Geese had alternately floated on this small pond and walked on its encircling ice earlier in the morning, and our hope was that at least a few of the giant Canadas would return after chomping stubble in nearby cornfields.
