Winter Lakes:

I always wonder about the life beneath the ice in the winter. I know green and growing plants stay there all winter long unless the snow on top of the ice gets so thick that the sunlight can’t penetrate. I’m a coward and stay off the lake ice because I know there are cracks and open spots where it heaves. You can hear the ice moving on a cold night. It sounds like a jet breaking the sound barrier. Once I wrote a story about the caves that are formed when the water recedes during the winter and leaves a space between the top of the water and the bottom of the ice. It won a literary award so I guess it was an okay story. And I still like to stick my head through holes and observe life beneath the ice.