SOUND OF FORMING ICE

SOUND OF FORMING ICE
By: Ray Hansen

Sounds like one of those conundrums doesn’t it? The sound of forming ice. Like the sound of one hand clapping, or the proverbial tree falling in the forest if no-one is there to hear it. But ice does make a sound when it forms, and I have heard it.

I was hunting deer during the mid-November rifle season on the Stonington Peninsula in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, in a semi-remote part of the Hiawatha National Forest. Temperatures hovered between zero and ten below for three days, under absolute dead calm. This area juts out into Lake Michigan and is surrounded by the big waters on all sides.

Earlier that year I scouted this section of forest, and pulled together some logs, dead pine branches, leaves, sticks, and other debris into several ground blinds where I could sit to take in the silence and watch for deer. I liked being partially concealed – I needed to remain undetected to have any chance against super-sensitive whitetails.

This was a place where a few big, wise bucks used the vast woodland to stay safe. No farm fields concentrated deer anywhere within miles of this spot. Only some logged areas might attract animals, and bucks would be making loops through the woods in search of does during this time of the annual rut. That was just about the only way they would make a mistake, and the only chance I had to see one that offered a clean shot was to park myself in a place they might cross.

So I sat, hour after hour, bundled in multiple layers of cold weather gear. An adult doe and two young deer were hanging around, and I hoped a buck would show to check her out.

Sometime late on the first day, I became aware of a low, constant sort of rumbling sound. I could not pinpoint where it originated from, but that was not unusual in the big woods. I first speculated that it was a county road grader far off in the distance. I thought it might be rolling along the gravel roads on the peninsula at a slow, steady creeping speed to grind down the “washboards” these dirt roads developed over time.

By the second day, I abandoned this theory, because the sound remained constant and I still could not tell which direction it came from. A grader would have moved by this time. The rumbling continued, broken only by the occasional hooting of great horned owls, and the lyric, almost mystical variety of calls created by ravens soaring through the frigid air just above tree-top level.

On the third day, a realization slowly enveloped me: I was hearing the ice form out on the big waters of Lake Michigan. The open water on the bays lay flat calm and exposed to the air with its deadly freezing temperature. Ice crystals formed immediately, and the almost imperceptible swells caused by tiny tides, currents, and other natural water movements cracked, stretched, and splintered the forming skim ice. The sound was that of the fracturing ice crystals amplified by thousands of acres of freezing water surrounding the peninsula I hunted on.

The one - and probably only - set of weather conditions that provided freezing water, combined with a lack of competing sounds, prevailed long enough to allow me to hear and finally identify its source. And to me, it was a chance to witness the sound of The Universe going about its business.
Copyright Ray Hansen, 2009