Winter has come to McDougal Lake. Winter comes when the fall goes away with the leaves, with only the stark trees remaining on the hills surrounding the lakeshore.
In the fall, the water is still warmer than the air, casting up a fog in the chilly dawn that rests on the water’s surface. Early in the morning over coffee, you can stand outside in the newly crisp air and watch the Canadian geese swimming in and out of the mist. But the geese are gone now too, and some mornings there is a glaze of ice on the lake that even the remaining ducks shy away from when they land.
Soon, the lake will be solid enough for the shanties of fishermen with their tip-ups, and their small trailers of supplies that get them through the day. We always walk out carrying our cocoa to see what’s biting out there, and usually it’s northern pike. Frequently the pike will exceed three feet in length, which is always good news for the fishermen, who know the pike spend most of their time eating the same gamefish the fishermen like to eat.
In spite of the cold, the fishermen always seem to be a cheerful lot, happy to share fish and fish stories. The biggest fish any of them can recall coming out of McDougal Lake was a four and one half foot Northern Pike taken by a man named Tom two years ago.
Everyone agrees that is a large fish for a lake as small as this one.
Other than fishing, the great recreation on the frozen lake is cross-country skiing, the sport of making the first fresh tracks after a snowfall. There is nothing quieter than snow falling on a distant country lake, and the smooth glissing of the skis through the fresh snow does little to interrupt it. Typically the skiers are the only people in the entire world on that particular lake, and the effect is serenely gratifying.
Which is to be remembered, because there are worse things than winter on a lake. In fact, there are worse things than winter. People who go south to escape winter either miss this understanding, or simply get tired of it. We rarely get tired of it, and when we do, we always see signs of the coming spring. And springtime on the lake is so beautiful that we rarely give thought to the winter then gone, not to be seen again until the leaves go away with the fall, and the trees surrounding the lakeshore are stark once again in the low light.