Atlin, Winter, 1985. There are winters and there are winters. Some are long and cold, and if you don’t get out for a break, it’s easy to get bushed – particularly if you are living cabin life.
The folks who make their living in the winter, trappers for example, have plenty to do, but even they find themselves a little crazed by the time February rolls around. That’s why events like ‘Rendezvous,’ the ‘Frostbite Music Festival’ and Atlin’s ‘Fun Days’ are scheduled right around then. They give everybody a chance to get together and blow off steam.
Every now and then though, the perfect winter comes along, and 1985-86 was a humdinger.
One midnight, just before Christmas, I took a break from working on a Christmas album, and took a stroll by the lake. Oh, I know what’s coming …
“Are you mad? What are you doing working on a Christmas album just before Christmas? You’ll never get it out in time.”
Yeah well … for me, the marketplace is a place you go to buy artichokes.
In any event, it was midnight, just before freeze-up, and I happened to be standing on the lakeshore right beside the old tour boat, the Tarahne. The air was still, and the surface of the lake was glass. I was gazing across the open water, when I heard whispering coming from every direction.
The whispers got louder until they became a constant hissing, then all of a sudden, thousands of individual flash points coalesced into a skin and snap! – the lake was frozen. I was stunned. The odds of being there at that very moment were likely one in a million.
As it turned out, it was the first event of many in the Magic Winter.
•••
When the lake freezes there is most often a wind, and the surface ends up being pretty rough. Not that it matters much. It only takes a day or two for a blanket of snow to cover the ice. But this year, all bets were off. Not only did the wind not blow, but the snow didn’t arrive either. For weeks the surface of Atlin Lake was an eighty-mile long mirror. Even the old timers couldn’t remember a winter like it.
We were all rubbing our mitts together in anticipation of getting out there on the ice, and it didn’t take long before the skates came out of the closet. But that was only the beginning. The doors to workshops from Marsh Lake to Warm Bay were thrown open and it wasn’t long before the iceboats started showing up.
There is nothing like sticking skates on a light wooden frame and hoisting up a good-sized sail in a wind to scare the crap out of you. These things can move, and everyone was a little surprised when there weren’t more reckless sailors with busted bones showing up at the Red Cross.
•••
My pal, Philip Adams, and I figured we’d take advantage of the situation to go on a skate trip down the lake. So, loading up a little sled with gear, we headed south. And we were movin’!
The game plan was to skate down Torres Channel, through Second Narrows, where we would overnight, then return the next day by following the eastern shoreline of Teresa Island. But it wasn’t to be. The ice at the mouth of the narrows turned out to be extremely rough and we were forced to turn back.
With our tails between our legs, we headed back up Torres towards Judy Currelly’s outfitting cabin. It was a long haul and we were both tired and cold when we stumbled in the door. We dumped our outside gear in the corner, tossed a stack of wood in the stove and fired it up. Soon, it was glowing cherry red and the place began to thaw. Peeling off our parkas, we boiled water for tea, settled down our weary bodies, and I was just about to put my feet up when Little Billy chimed in.
Billy is my perverse alter ego. He’s a pest, and when he shows up, he tends to perch on my left shoulder. It’s a not good thing symbolically. Death and mischief perch on your left shoulder, and this little shit has got me into more trouble …
“Say,” he chirped in that Bugs Bunny voice of his, “that pal of yours is coming into town tonight right? He’ll be arriving in a couple of hours, and I’m pretty sure he’ll be bringing beer. And you’re so close Doc, so close.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I mumbled back.
“What’s that?” Philip shouted over the roaring stove.
“I’m toying with the idea of skating the last leg back to town,” I shouted. “You’ve got to be kidding,” Philip said, echoing my own thoughts.
But I was already donning my parka and untying my dripping skates from the drying rack above the stove.
“Nope, I’m gonna give it a shot,” I said, “but first, I’m going to carb up so I can stay alert.”
Down the hatch went the remaining candy bars along with fourteen of those little packages of brown sugar. By the time I was done, I was stuffed. But, by gum, I was alert.
“Alrighty then,” I crowed, “I’m ready!” And pushed open the door. Philip shook his head as a halo of ice crystals blew through the opening.
“You’re an idiot. Go if you must, but try not to fall in the open water at the mouth of the channel. Those are my good socks you’re wearing, and I don’t want to have to peel them off you at the funeral.”
I waved, slammed the door, hobbled down to the lakeshore on my blades, and slid out on to the moonlit, glassy surface of Torres Channel. Pushing off, I strode north towards the mouth of the narrows, images of frosty beer-filled glasses topped with foam driving me onwards.
The whole thing was a magic carpet ride. More than a little heady from exhaustion and slightly woozy from my sugar buzz, I found myself skating on the world’s biggest diamond under a full moon, with a Tolkien Atlin Mountain behind me and the little town of Atlin, a sprinkling of tiny twinkling lights, ahead in the distance.
Shup … shup … shup … went the skates; aaah … hoo, aah … hoo, went my breath, the rhythm mesmerizing in that Robert Service ‘silence you most can hear,’ – a silence as close to being in outer space as you are ever going to get.
‘Old Robert would be proud of me,’ thought my addled brain as it floated above an aching body and rubbery legs.
You just can’t buy this stuff. Even if you ask the clerk nicely.
‘I’m afraid that particular experience is not for sale sir. How about a nice pair of socks pulled from a dead man who recently fell through the ice?’
But even a heightened experience can’t save you from exhaustion. I was so tired when I got back, I didn’t have enough strength to drink the beer. I know … it sounds implausible, and it may well be a statistical anomaly worth looking into … but there it is.
•••
Philip cruised back the next day, swinging into town with that ‘hale fellow well met’ attitude of his, and extolling the virtues of long-distance skate trips. Damn his eyes.
I was still in bed when he arrived.