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We didn’t get our druthers.
In the fading afternoon we snowshoed into the cabin, and I humped an oversized Duluth pack with not much in it. The girls were wearing their doggy vests. That was at something below zero and falling in the clear darkening sky.
Inside the cabin my brother’s fire had burned down and you could see your breath and it was around 25°F inside. So, I stoked the fire and stayed in my insulated bibs and down jacket and stocking cap and went up to the bed and the heavy blankets in the loft in search of the rising warm air, but it was no warmer in the loft.
Eventually my brother came in on the snowmobile dragging the sled and supplies. Fresh water, food, RC cola, propane. We brought in wood, stoked the fire again and again, swept, put snow on the woodstove to melt, and hunkered down.
The first morning it was -20°F outside and finally climbed to 48°F inside. We stoked the fire and hunkered down, cleaned up some summer fishing reels and lined them, paged through back issues of Minnesota Conservation Volunteer. Thought. My favorite hobby.
The next morning was -5°F, clear and cold, under a high-pressure system.
I snowshoed on the tails down the steep hill with the minnow bucket to the lake while my brother snowmobiled the long roundabout way onto the lake with all the gear: Eskimo propane auger, his Frabill house, my Eskimo house, one hand auger, tackle. Electronics.
There it was clear mostly but one of those days where the water crystallizes in the air and it’s a light blue sky and the sun is hazy from the cold. There was a light wind, and we were under a high-pressure system.
He drilled holes with my power auger, and I drilled one with the manual auger, and got the tip-up line down. We popped up my icehouse and covered the two holes with the icehouse and I went inside.
Inside the icehouse I sat on a 5-gallon bucket and jigged. It glowed blue and green inside the icehouse, the light coming through the snow and ice along the bottom edge and from the holes, light from one, two, three plastic windows at head level. Me just jigging now with bare hands because I was warm away from the wind, and body heat and insulation kept it refrigerated, not frozen.
I heard my brother 50 yards away in his Frabill with music playing on one of those Bluetooth speakers that connect to your phone, and as the time went on the songs, he was playing became more obscure, more his, not mine. The songs I knew distracted me from the cold slow fishing because I listened to them, but the songs that I didn’t know – his songs – were distracting because I didn’t like them.
So, I just sat and jigged and thought and smoked and recited poetry that I knew or had written or had made. And here’s one I created about 20 or 25 years ago when I was a single bachelor, which is redundant, but being redundant is kind of how I feel often.
“A Rose”
A rose is
To the kingdom of nouns
What “to be” is
To the kingdom of verbs,
And “good” is
To that of adjectives,
And “well” to adverbs.
Its power has been taken
from it
By men like me.
Its symbolism has
become
Like an American flag
In a television commercial.
But I would buy
A rose, I think,
Because I am not different.
And I would buy one
that
Is good and well.
And give it to you,
With some shame.
For a rose is good,
And giving one is great.
But look into the eyes
Of the giver,
And love a powerless
poet.
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