The Season of Ice
by Steve Cotherman

The author serves as the site director for the Society's Madeline Island Historical Museum. Steve describes himself as an indoor person.

	In northern Wisconsin, winter is the time of ice. Up here, a lot of folks live for ice.

Many people think winter is the time to hibernate, to slow down. Around Lake Superior, though, winter is when folks recharge—only the smallest minority here think winter is the time to revel in solitude and to get a lot of reading done. Most race around, some motorized, some not, sliding across any frozen or snow-covered surfaces.

	Jim Fuller, Charly, and dogs, Buster and Scotty, delivering the U.S. Mail during the winter. La Pointe, Madeline Island, Wisconsin, circa 1915-1925. SHSW WHi (X3) 41235.

For me, winter is when the woods are the most inviting, for there are no bugs and very little gets in the way of the view. I like the woods in the winter. They are lit with a blue and yellow glow late on a January day. In the summer, they are dark and hot and wet and a little foreboding. In the summer, I never go into the woods. I skirt the edges, admiring the green and looking for brave wild flowers that have escaped the dark for life on the edge of the woods, along a path or road.

	Chopping ice for summer in front of the La Pointe dock, Madeline Island, Wisconsin, circa 1930-1940. SHSW WHi (X3) 41175.

In northern Wisconsin, winter is the time of ice. Up here, a lot of folks live for ice. Some of us less-indoctrinated types are glad for the recent mild winters. Lovers of ice, on the other hand, get depressed. They need lots of snow and weeks of temperatures hovering around zero.

On Madeline Island, the season of ice means freedom—freedom from ferry boat schedules and rough seas, and the cost of transportation over to and back from the mainland. Islanders come alive in the winter, for this is the time of the year when they are most free. Only a freedom lover lives on an island to begin with. So, for a short but invigorating period of around two to ten weeks, there is an ice road between Bayfield and the island. It is maintained just like a county highway, which it is, technically. It is plowed clear of snow, making a nifty embankment on either side of the road for the driver to follow. Leftover Christmas trees are planted along this ridge to mark the road. This is especially useful in a storm when the road and sky are white but the Christmas trees are green. It is reassuring to see a tree emerge from a white-out when one is driving blind across a 2.5-mile expanse of frozen Lake Superior.

	A modern "wind sled" on Madeline Island, circa 1954. SHSW WHi (X3) 41162.

There is a strange time when neither ferry boats nor cars can cross the lake. This is the time when the ice is thick enough to support a person on skis, snowshoes, or even a snow machine (city folks call them snowmobiles), but not sturdy enough to support a pickup truck laden with builder's tools. At this time of early ice, the infamous wind sled makes its annual appearance. The wind sled—an open 24-foot boat with skids on the bottom and an airplane engine in back offers a trip which lasts less than five minutes each way.

One has two choices on the wind sled. Sit in front and risk being crippled as your back bears the brunt of each and every bump, crack, and frozen irregularity; this is not an ice skating rink and there is no Zamboni to prepare the way from Bayfield to La Pointe. Or you can choose to sit in back, where the ride is smoother but the roar of the engine leaves one nearly deaf. Those are your choices: crippled or deaf.

In a normal winter with lots of storms over Lake Superior, a huge crack, or heave, develops in the ice about 25 yards offshore from the Bayfield approach. This crack occurs nearly every year. You can't drive across the crack—well, actually you can, but your car might end up in 25 feet of water. You must park and walk across the crack to the wind sled to take you to the island. One year they tried to span the crack with a wooden bridge sturdy enough to bear the weight of a car or pickup truck. This worked for a week until the ice heaved again and knocked over the bridge. This phenomenon is like an earthquake fault line in which two opposing ice masses crash into each other and either go up (a heave) or go down to make a big sink hole or crack. Cracks and sink holes appear in the middle of the channel as well, so it is not unusual for the road to be moved from day to day, a few yards thisaway or thataway.

Eventually, the snow stops and the ice gives way. In 1993 the lake was frozen solid, but was slushy and dangerous until March 31, when a ferocious nor'easter blew in and completely destroyed the ice between Bayfield and the island. Early in the morning of April 1 the ferry boat started up again for the year, plowing across the two miles of the bay through jagged ice floes, bringing islanders' unfettered freedom to a quick end, at least for another year. One day you've got ice, the next day—ice water.