DULUTH, Minn. _ Maybe you saw them. Tiny silhouettes, black against the jumbled white ice that northeast winds shoved to our end of Lake Superior. The silhouettes were humans, bent over the ice. Anglers, seeking lake trout or whitefish or coho salmon.
"Did you see those guys out on the lake?" people would say. "Crazy."
We are quick to judge, to assign value to their behavior with no research of our own. Maybe they're not crazy. Maybe there's more ice there than the rest of us know who haven't walked out there with a chisel or an auger to see for ourselves. Maybe the ice is anchored there more firmly than we realize.
We care about those folks out there for a couple of reasons, I think. First, their safety matters to us, even if we question their risk assessment skills. We don't want anyone going with the floe.
But in another sense, we monitor their comings and goings because we are citizens of the North. We keep track of natural events like ice and what it means in our lives on this greatest lake. Will it allow us access to fish? Is it reliable enough to walk out to the Apostle Islands sea caves? (No.) Did you see the Coast Guard cutter, the Alder, outside the Duluth ship canal a few days ago, bashing its way through the ice? Shipping season is almost upon us.
We have chosen this life in the North, and we are inextricably linked to its rhythms. We pay attention to natural phenomena, to conditions and critters and migrations.
Ice anglers headed farther north for one more go at the trout want to know, how thick is the ice? Will we need extensions on our augers? Is there slush?
Snowmobilers check websites and call club members. How are the trails holding up? Are the corners getting thin from wear and tear?
Fat-bikers pass the word on the white paths that snake across Duluth. Are the trails still firm? Are they glazed? Are they soft? Do we need studded tires?
Birders await the first returning eagles coming back north. Up the Mississippi River valley, the St. Croix, the Brule. Then around the tip of Lake Superior at Duluth and on to their waiting nests farther north. The birders have secured funding for a spring count, I hear. They'll be on Skyline with binoculars and clipboards. Keeping track. Counting eagles. Sharing the news.
Meanwhile, steelheaders are gearing up for another migration. The lower Brule River season for Lake Superior's big rainbows opens in a couple of weeks. North Shore streams won't be far behind. Anticipation runs high. I saw a friend of mine the other day who lives on the upper Brule. I asked her if the river was ice-free at her place. It is.
In a couple of weeks, maybe we'll have to run over there, slip a canoe in the river, let the current carry us downstream. The upper river won't be open to fishing until May, but it's possible we could see some of the first hen steelhead moving upstream, making spawning beds in the gravel. Surely we'll see some migrating eagles as we paddle. Maybe a couple of pairs will be staking out territories in the nests at the head of Lucius Lake.
This is spring as we know it in the North. Our senses awaken. The light returns. The creatures stir. We wait and watch and wonder.
I glanced at the big lake on my morning commute two days ago. Cut loose by a west wind, that big sheet of ice was sliding toward the Apostle Islands. Open water glistened in its wake where those anglers had been a day before.
I didn't see any of them riding the floe, checking to make sure they had Wisconsin fishing licenses.
