Some moments stand out

 

First the boys went in and Sunday was clear blue and white in the sugarbush. They went up the old road on snowshoes and dragged the toboggan heavy with gear and carried things and humped packs and up through the mixed woods to a high ground and slowly it turned to maple and leveled and wound and now there was a great basin off and far down to the lake that couldn’t be seen for the trees.

After a half mile the old road dead-ended and then came the path down cut through the young balsams and stunted trees between the old dead birch trunks. That was the south side of the lake and they went down the north, windward face of the slope, so that the snow was drifted in deep and they made the first trail down on snowshoes while the toboggan slid without control and ran up on the tails of their snowshoes and stopped hard at the Achilles’ heels of their boots. But when they came to the lake it was brilliant and white though the wind – from the northwest – was coming up.

The wind came up while they humped to the left. Then they stopped and drilled holes with the hand augers over twenty feet of water and a foot of snow and twenty inches of ice. Still, the wind came up so when the tip ups were down just off the bottom, they put up the icehouse.

The wind rose until it reached twenty-five miles an hour and it swept the snow across the lake and the wind froze the tip-up holes and the blowing snow covered the tip-ups and the far, far shore – the northerly one – could not be discerned for the cutting snow in the wind.

They pulled up three lake trout on the tip-ups tipped with fathead chubs.

I was not there with them; some of this they told me; some of this I could see because I have been there like that and I could make the narrative in my head.

Friday was warm and comfortable and calm and clear and we snowshoed on the snowshoe packed trail up through the white woods and down the steep slope, now the toboggans being sent down first on the path down the slope and this time there was no wind. We fished straight out and found twenty-three feet of water and drilled holes and put lines down, and only then disrobed to our inner layers – our cotton, wool and polyester wet from sweat – to dry ourselves in the cool late afternoon sun.

We caught one lake trout and lost two others and we stayed until the Northern Lights came out faintly in the blackness across the lake and over the tree line.

It’s with me everywhere now. Some moments stand out from all the times, and some experiences seem never to leave. Even though you have to leave, or you were never even there.