sky
12-24-2008, 10:56 AM
On a frosty winter day, when I was about nine years old, two friends of mine, Cathy, Bobby, and I decided to go ice fishing on a small pond, a block away from my house. I lived in a small town located out in the boonies, outside Minneapolis, Minnesota at the time. The adventure ended up being one of those brainy ideas we often came up with when we were kids, where we lived to talk about.
We chopped a hole in the ice, then dropped a line down into the hole, on our make shift fishing pole, we made out of a tree branch. Don’t laugh - we weren’t expecting to catch anything. It was all in fun and games.
After a little while, Cathy started sliding around on the ice, further out towards the center of the pond. As a distinct cracking sound occurred, I looked up and saw Cathy plunge under the ice. When her head burst up out of the water, her screams for help pierced the silence.
I watched in horror as she struggled to get out of the frigid water, which only proceeded to crack the ice further around her. She tried to hoist herself out of the water and crawl onto the ice, but all of her attempts were in vain. I yelled to Bobby to go get help. He stood frozen in time, until I yelled at him again. Then he took off like a jack rabbit to God knows where.
Cathy started to hyperventilate while trying to tread water. She kept trying to pull herself up onto the ice but slipped back into the frigid water. I grabbed the tree branch we used for a fishing pole but the ice kept cracking when I got close to her…. Besides that, the branch was too short to reach her. The ice was deceiving. It was too hard to tell where the ice was too thin, due to the thin layer of snow covering it.
I could tell panic was starting to set in by her wide eyed expression… That’s when I saw her scarf, and told her to grab onto one end and toss it out to me. I crawled on my belly to grab the other end. I told her to hold on with both hands and I slowly eased backwards while still on my belly.
When she finally crawled out of the water, onto the ice I told her to move really carefully so the ice wouldn’t crack further which could have placed us both in a bad predicament. It wasn’t until we made our way 40 feet or so back to the shore did it set in how close I was to watching my friend die.
Her lips and face were a weird shade of blue, and she was shaking uncontrollably. Icicles were beginning to form in her soaking wet hair. She mumbled in a weak voice. “I am freezing”. I helped her take off her mittens, and jacket, and gave her mine, and together arm in arm we some how manage to walk back to my house, with me half carrying her. I threw her wet clothes into the dryer down in the basement and wrapped her in a blanket.
We all agreed to keep it quiet so we wouldn’t get into trouble. I have told very few people about what happened the day we decided to go ice fishing… for some reason I thought about it today…
We chopped a hole in the ice, then dropped a line down into the hole, on our make shift fishing pole, we made out of a tree branch. Don’t laugh - we weren’t expecting to catch anything. It was all in fun and games.
After a little while, Cathy started sliding around on the ice, further out towards the center of the pond. As a distinct cracking sound occurred, I looked up and saw Cathy plunge under the ice. When her head burst up out of the water, her screams for help pierced the silence.
I watched in horror as she struggled to get out of the frigid water, which only proceeded to crack the ice further around her. She tried to hoist herself out of the water and crawl onto the ice, but all of her attempts were in vain. I yelled to Bobby to go get help. He stood frozen in time, until I yelled at him again. Then he took off like a jack rabbit to God knows where.
Cathy started to hyperventilate while trying to tread water. She kept trying to pull herself up onto the ice but slipped back into the frigid water. I grabbed the tree branch we used for a fishing pole but the ice kept cracking when I got close to her…. Besides that, the branch was too short to reach her. The ice was deceiving. It was too hard to tell where the ice was too thin, due to the thin layer of snow covering it.
I could tell panic was starting to set in by her wide eyed expression… That’s when I saw her scarf, and told her to grab onto one end and toss it out to me. I crawled on my belly to grab the other end. I told her to hold on with both hands and I slowly eased backwards while still on my belly.
When she finally crawled out of the water, onto the ice I told her to move really carefully so the ice wouldn’t crack further which could have placed us both in a bad predicament. It wasn’t until we made our way 40 feet or so back to the shore did it set in how close I was to watching my friend die.
Her lips and face were a weird shade of blue, and she was shaking uncontrollably. Icicles were beginning to form in her soaking wet hair. She mumbled in a weak voice. “I am freezing”. I helped her take off her mittens, and jacket, and gave her mine, and together arm in arm we some how manage to walk back to my house, with me half carrying her. I threw her wet clothes into the dryer down in the basement and wrapped her in a blanket.
We all agreed to keep it quiet so we wouldn’t get into trouble. I have told very few people about what happened the day we decided to go ice fishing… for some reason I thought about it today…