Annual Icing
When you can’t remember how long you’ve been doing something, you know it’s worth continuing. At that point, what year you began isn’t nearly as important as ensuring that it occurs annually.
We come from near and far and we know each other in a variety of ways. I imagine two diagrams, each filled with dots and lines. In the first, the dots represent our individual places of residence, but at the center is a large, bold dot for Rome, Maine, where we all rendezvous. For this weekend, it’s the center of the universe and we all converge there. Lines connect our current homes to Rome and they spread out, to a degree, like wheel spokes. In the second diagram, the dots represent attendees and the lines show their connections. Some are family; some grew up together. Some went to school together; some met through their partners. Some met “on the ice.”
But no matter where we reside or how we know each other, the annual ice fishing trip intersects us all for a few, short days. And in those days, our cumulative energies and that of the tasks and adventures at hand combine to create a cocktail that can only be tasted once a year, in person; indeed, it isn’t tasted, it is downed.
Previous trips merge into one and many conversations include the question, “Which year was that?” or the caveat, “I can’t remember exactly when, but …” Each year seems to be a particularly good one, especially right after it’s over. The great steelheader Lani Waller wrote, “If I jump around a bit when I write, it's because none of this really happens in a straight line. Time changes places in the mind as you contemplate, describe, or go fishing, because our hopes emerge, in part, from a desire to relive past events. The present thus becomes both the past and the future simultaneously, and as long-time angling companion John Ferguson said, ‘We are always in the middle of it, aren't we?’”
By this point, we are - largely thanks to our hosts - dialed: efficient, effective, and enthusiastic. This applies to logistics, fishing, consumption, and socialization and placing our emphasis solely on those elements sets us up well for success.
The venue and the fishery are the reason we’re there at all. They’re certainly not the only reason we go, but they are catalysts. As one who doesn’t live near, I am always struck by it and am reminded of the phrase ‘to see the forest through the trees.’ Steeping onto the ice in the morning, it is vast; another world, seemingly. But as the focus narrows to drilling holes, setting traps, and catching up with old friends, it’s possible to forget, or lose sight of the scale of the place. A 360-degree turn and scan of the horizon puts things back into perspective.
I suppose the ice grabs us all for different reasons; we’d each describe the ‘whys’ differently. Some of the reasons likely can’t be fully articulated, but that’s fine and good. If we could always put our finger precisely on something we crave, would we still want it?
In the words of author and angler Chris Dombrowski, “We went fishing. I hope we’ll go again. A loss of faith, after all, begins with a loss of ritual.”
