|
The
AM radio delivers the local weather as the next hand of cards is
dealt onto the table. The hum of the heater gives off a brilliant
orange glow, warming the canvas ice shack as the cracking of another
frosty beer interrupts the conversation on how the Twins are going
to make it to the World Series this year. A bobber disappears into
a black hole. The dealer throws down his cards and beer and prepares
to set the hook into the fish below.
Winter
brings minus zero temperatures and blankets of white powder that
cover the frozen tundra of the Fargo-Moorhead area for nearly five
months. This is a place where scraping off the windows of a car
becomes a morning habit. So when winter hits the region, it brings
with it numerous activities that warm-climate inhabitants never
experience, such as the joy of shoveling snow from around a car
after it slides off an icy road into the ditch. Outdoor enthusiasts
in the Fargo-Moorhead area enjoy snowmobiling across frozen fields
and rivers, cross-country skiing on fresh powder, or wandering onto
a newly-frozen lake to do some ice fishing.
Ice fishing is a sport common to the
Upper Midwest. Yes, people actually walk out onto the water and
cut holes into the ice and fish through them. Pat Greff, an ice
fishing enthusiast from Fargo, waits for the lakes to ice over so
he can participate in this winter challenge.
“Ice fishing puts everyone on
an equal-playing field, you don’t need a boat to got out and
catch fish like in the summer,” said Greff.
“Ice
Fishing”
by Mary Pryor
The shanties mushroom
slums on open ice
haphazard, jerry-built
or tight as drums
tarpaper, lumber, plywood
metal siding
stove pipe akimbo
aerial askew
no landscaping
no grid
nor rhyme nor reason
enmeshed in the tire tracks.
Later in the season
from time to time
a four-wheeled drive breaks through
submerges.
Come, you anthropologists
to ponder “village culture”
basic urges
the chase, the kill, sweet sloth
oxymoric fusion
drill hole
drop line
uncap another beer.
Drowned in the ball game
who can hear
the wind’s wall
coyote’s cry
the going
struck from the lake’s bell bottom
where the kranken
and legendary walleyes half awaken.
(Mary Pryor is a former MSUM professor)
The
poem, which describes the sport beautifully, did not come from
a personal experience. The author, Mary Pryor, has never gone
ice fishing before in her life. Coming to the area from Nebraska,
ice fishing was new to Pryor. As she drove by the lakes, she
noticed ice huts out on the frozen lakes and that brought about
the poem. “Ice fishing is in the air,” said Pryor,
“it’s simply good and romantic.” So how could
someone write a poem and describe a sport so perfectly? “It’s
like writing about flying a plane, you can describe what it’s
like flying, even if you’ve never flown before,” said
Pryor.
With
the joys of the season also comes danger. Winter doesn’t
always give warnings. Fierce frigid winds sweep across the prairie,
mixing with snow, causing cancellations of community events
and stranding people to the confines of their homes. |
|
 |
Some remain stranded on the road. Unable to see, motorists hit icy
spots, sliding into snow-filled ditches, stranding them until the
storm subsides. According to
the U.S. Department of Commerce, 70 percent of deaths in winter
are related to automobiles. Another 25 percent occur when storms
approach suddenly, causing near zero visibility.
With winter lasting for months
in the Fargo-Moorhead area, snow seems to be talked about throughout
the year. “I’ll be out in my driveway in the summer and
hear my neighbors talking about how much snow we’re going to
have because of the way the caterpillars are behaving,” said
author Mark Vinz. In Vinz’s poem, “Living on the Edge
of Dakota,” the last stanza of the poem says it all:
no
matter what season
we live with snow.
|
