Reflections on Waterway Wonders – March Edition: Ice

This is the second in a series of Reflections, a new column for this newsletter. Each month, Lynn Kuhns takes a look at the season and some every-day or newsworthy facet of the Fox/Wolf system.

Lynn invites you to consider your own experiences, memories and dreams… and to comment, or offer ideas.

Reflections on Waterway Wonders…

Last month, I began my column with “Water: See it Now as Snow and Ice.”  But mostly, I focused on the snow atop the ice.

Much of that snow has now melted and retreated, feeding the ditches, marshes and other lowlands, then fattening-up feeder streams; or pouring directly into the lakes and rivers of the Fox-Wolf waterways.

Up, up… and up some more. We’ve already seen the water levels rise all over this whole massive system, as farm fields, public lands, residential areas, woodlands, towns and cities drain what winter has dumped as white, and held frozen for so long.

Water. We now can see it held cruelly back, then squeezed hard until it pops fire-cracker white and bursts raging-drunk wild between the dams at Menasha.

We see the Wolf River driving on through the shallow upper-pool lakes carrying ice pallets the size of the footprint of a semi-truck – and ice that appears out of nowhere as a floating mini-Artic island with its crunched-up piles of ancient snow and ice shards topped with assorted winter litter flecked with water’s-edge loam.

Some ice is rushing, sometimes smashing high along the wharfs and under the bridges of Oshkosh to fan out into Winnebago and drift on. Or melt away.

Some languid ice in bays or just out of rivers’ currents seems to linger, then slink shyly away in lazy curves…gently nudging the shoreline or other ice chunks…see-sawing along…as if propelled by something as deep and invisible and unlikely as a dream of white-chocolate silk in a whisper of wind.

Some of the ice close to shore and in channels has two layers, with the freezing, then snow, then melt,the sub-zero hard freeze leaving a ghost-layer lurking under the water’s surface, as if waiting to take real form, to rise…and become free.

We also have smaller waterways – like the Pine River, off Lake Poygan – with their own tight little canyons offering shelter from sun where the ice and the water run together as if in familiar play

This spring, I have yet to drive up and to see New London, Shiocton or Shawano. But I know each twist in the Wolf River, each channel and bay has its own ice marvels, maneuvers and miracles. But not for long. So, I gotta go soon.

Too soon, the walleye, the sturgeon, the boaters, the Jet-skiers and those late sunsets all will take their place as something to watch in the waters.

So don’t wait. Go, look. Ice-hunt. Now. Grab the kids; invite a neighbor. Yes – to watch all that ice go where it has to go.

Find a riverbank, bridge, fishing platform, boat ramp or wharf. Any intriguing waterfront.  [As of this writing,] Ice still lurks hard and chunky under willow trees, along north- facing inlets and channels.

Perhaps you can get out in your kayak, canoe or other craft to nudge along the ice in safe places.

Depending on where you go, you may be able to set up real close, to see what months of freezing, then snow-capping, then melting and moving along on current can do to something as, um… seemingly simple…. as frozen water.

Get up real close. Maybe look underneath, to see where it’s melting, and trace where the drops drop.

Get creative. Check the clarity and structure of the ice for clues as to where it came from and will flow as water; and where the future of our waterways lies.  (Perhaps: Within you?)

Each ice-site is as unique as snowflakes are.  There’s stubborn snow-topped ice, ice, dirty-from-what-a-whole-darned-winter-left-behind ice, ice-hugging cattails trimmed with other flora; ice crystals so clear you could sip a pomegranate martini off them without a taint.

Look for fainting ice, fighting ice, easy-flowing ice, bobbing-like-a-stupid-clown ice. Discover, and name your ice.

What does spring teach us, but to stop – stop cleaning our homes and yards, planning our gardens, tuning our bikes and bodies. Stop, if only for a little while. And just get outside waterside and play.

Spend time with the sweeter “messes” and marvels of Nature and all her solid, liquid and vapored waters that we are so bountifully blessed with.

There’s often a bonus: You may see Sandhill Cranes and other busy riparian-loving birds and critters; a soaring solo eagle, or two at a tug-of-war on the ice over some dead something way out there. Flocks of ducks on open water could be busy eating and eager to mate, even as ice floats by.

Maybe, you could ice-peek at one of those magical, secret times… when sunsets, sunrises and moonlight accentuate the simple beauty of ice floating down the river.

But. Like everything that warms our heart or tickles our curiosity, spring is mostly, amazingly about change. Water to ice; back again. And only right now, we have it all.