Breaking the Ice

4:25 PM Sunday, January 14, 2018

So the past few months, I've been unemployed. It's pretty crappy because a) no money, b) job hunting, and c) it's winter. I wouldn't mind being unemployed if it were spring/summer/fall because I could be outside working in the yard instead of being inside binge-watching Supernatural.

Not that I'm dissing Supernatural at all. It's a great show for binge-watching and who doesn't love themselves a little bit of Dean Winchester? 



via GIPHY

But as far as the best season for an outdoorsy type person who doesn't do winter sports at all to be unemployed, I'm going with winter being the worst season.

Over the last few months, I've kind of fallen in love with a group of ducks on the lake behind our house. They started stalking me back in October, I think because they were looking for food and I was outside. They decided human = food.

Honestly, they weren't wrong.


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After the lake froze over, I discovered that they were still hanging around. The female mallard in the group has a gimpy leg and they were stuck on a part of the lake that was frozen all around them. I worried about them and starting buying duck food from the store to feed them.

Because that's super reasonable, right? 


One day, my hubby discovered that they'd moved and they were out on an unfrozen part of the lake. Since it wasn't that far from the back of my house, I started wandering out onto the ice because I was worried my gimpy girl, who I named Henrietta, was going to have trouble getting over to me for food.

The weather started getting a little warmer and the lake was slowly thawing in parts. I was taking pains to walk carefully across the ice, partly to make sure I didn't slip and fall, partly because it was hard to tell how thick the ice was.

Disclaimer:

Now normally, I'm a pretty sensible person. I have never wandered out on the ice before this winter because I have a fairly decent idea how deep the lake is and I have heard all the horror stories of people falling through ice into lakes or rivers and dying. And falling into a frozen hole and not being able to get out doesn't sound like fun, to be honest.

But love affair with ducks + boredom from being unemployed = stupid human tricks.

I walked out on the ice a few days ago to feed the ducks, knowing that the ice was thawing. I was watching where I was stepping, to try to be sure that I didn't step anywhere that the ice was too thin. 

I didn't see my ducks but I did see some geese, who were pretty shy of humans, so I started tossing food out to them. I was just thinking that I should move around to a different area, as I thought I might be walking out onto ice that was too thin.

Then I broke through the ice.

Not just a portion of me.

Not just a foot or a leg.

All of me.

I plunged down into the lake, over my head.

It's amazing the number of things that can run through a person's head in a short period of time. And not just run but move at Mach speed.

"I'm going to die."

"Is this how I'm really going to die?"

"I'm not going to be able to get out and I'm going to freeze to death and then drown."

I panicked and started scrambling to get out. As I kicked and clawed, attempting to pull myself out, the ice kept breaking around me. 

I thought of my sons, I thought of my husband, I knew I still had my phone with me but couldn't figure out how to get to it and call or text him while I was struggling to keep my head out of the water. 

I yelled for my husband, over and over, but I was a whole house away and he couldn't hear me. Then I stopped yelling for him because how could he come out and help me without breaking through the ice himself?

I kept trying to pull myself out and the ice kept breaking. I was cold, my hands were freezing, with one hand out of a mitten, as I clawed at the ice. Then suddenly, the ice stopped breaking and I stopped panicking, I stopped flailing with my feet, and I just rested my arms on the ice as I contemplated how to get out. 

I carefully dug my fingers into the ice to get a good hold to pull myself out. I slid back a bit and part of the ice crushed under me and I started to feel a bit of despair, but I held on.

Slowly, I pulled myself out. Bit by bit, pulling myself out slowly so as not to break the ice again. I got fully out and lay a moment, waiting to see what would happen. Slowly, I got up, slowly I walked across the ice to the shore. 

I attempted to walk up the slope behind my house but it was muddy and I couldn't get traction, I kept sliding down the mud of the slope. I was so ready to be done. I started shouting for my husband again. I made it up to the side of the house and just knew I couldn't walk around to enter the front door.

Thankfully, we have a sliding door in the back of the house that enters our bedroom, so I pulled that door open and shouted to my husband. He came in, saw me standing there soaking wet, ejaculated "Holy cow!", and started helping me pull off my wet clothes. He led me down the hallway to the bathroom, turned on the shower, and helped me get in. Then he made some hot chocolate for me and for most of the rest of the evening, I sat in a daze on the sofa.


I got off easily overall. I probably spent no more than 2 minutes total floundering in the frozen water before I managed to pull myself out. I massaged the ends of a couple fingers on the right hand, the hand that was un-mittened, because they were tingly and feeling like they had a multitude of paper cuts, but there was no lasting damage. The only visible proof of anything happening to me that night was a cut I sustained on the side of my hand from the ice. 

I don't feel overly traumatized by the experience, as I can look out my back door at the lake and the ducks and not feel stressed, though I do feel rather uncomfortable when I see pictures of broken ice on lakes in other parts of the country. 

From our house or from the neighbor's house, the visible hole I left in the ice doesn't look that far away and it's hard to fathom that in that short distance from the shore, I could have drowned. But walk out to the end of the cul-de-sac and look over at the hole and suddenly, the picture changes completely and it seems a million miles away.

There's no moral to this story, besides the obvious "don't walk on a frozen lake without someone keeping an eye on you!!!" It was just one thing in a series of crappy events over a course of several days. But I know that it could have been a whole lot worse, considering everything, and I'm lucky I managed to get out when others might have been less fortunate. 


hole in ice where I fell in
Not that far and yet a million miles away

1 comments:

  1. Holy. Crap. Yeah, that looks pretty far out there to me!

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