Ice Fog, Boundary Waters

In one afternoon in the Boundary Waters Wilderness you can ski a good ten miles on the hardpack, sometimes quaking lake. In glacial time, it’s somewhere between the space of fifteen thousand and a million years. On skis, it’s a solid 15 afternoons of skiing, maybe twenty if you count breaking camp to ski across the 150 mile northern border that marks the northern boundary of the Boundary Waters. But the wilderness doesn’t stop there, it heads north for just a little over another million acres more. Endless rocks, secret channels, tracks marching across snow and rocks, marking currents of time. In this image, six inches of powder from the evening became sculpted on the lakes, conforming to the subtle variations of lake bottoms, covering fox tracks, wolf tracks, maybe a pine marten. Our tracks skim the lake and the channels of water and land that connect these isthmuses of land. It’s almost hard to tell if it’s land or the water that’s stuck in time but we know differently. It’s getting colder and there is a layer of frozen water just under the snow. The snow is sticking to the skis. Five pounds, then pounds, the weight adds up quickly across a lake. We ski through a narrow channel; the group goes ahead. I unhook a tripod from my pack, fumble with it, drop it in the snow and I can’t get it right. Snow freezes in the screw and then I try to move. I realize that I’ve partially frozen into Snatch Lake, into part of the Boundary Waters. So I don’t struggle. I pickup the camera and I watch as a cloud on the distant shoreline rises and hovers. Ice fog. I try to shift and shift again but I realize that I’m frozen into the lake. I hold my breath; my entire body more akin to the small island in the distance in the moment when the light turns ice blue. I take one image, then undig myself. Sizes: 10x6, 20x12, 30x24