1/1/98... Happy New Ice.

Brent and them put out camps at the Abby Bridge on the 23rd. Pretty eager. There was still open water by the town landing, and just a skim of windowpane to Riverbend. But last year there was such a crowd on the Abigadasset, that the minute anyone slid a camp there this season, a rush was on for prime locations. Guy and Jimmy had been spinning wheels, waiting for good ice anywhere, and Brent had the Taj Mahal of camps primed and loaded.

Brent never half does anything. His camp is a bright painted modular construction with a plexiglass roof and sliding windows. Most smelt camps are dark cramped spaces, but the Taj opens out to the sun and stars. There's some who prophesy that the fish will never bite at a sunny racehole, but there's a thousand theories about biting fish.

The Abby Bridge is a single lane span connecting East Bowdoinham to the rest of us, and the road takes a switchback S as it chokes down to the crossing. A couple of steel girders thrown across between concrete abutments, no railings, the whole works always looks like it's about to slide off and go downtide. The tidewater makes a serpentine approach from Sands, the channel sweeping into the Abby between frozen marshes. The big transmission lines from Maine Yankee drape across this choke point, headed for their bay crossing at Brown's Point. Towering steel pylons marching east and west.

They caught a few fish. Then it came off mild for Christmas, and there was a rush for shore. Now the frost is back. Ice crying out as it congeals, startling the air.

Yesterday morning I hoofed the dogs down to Bernard's to see what was what, and Bert and Andy and them had two dozen camps up and wired at Riverbend. 6-8 inches of black ice. Woodsmoke pluming. The first string of camps run along the inside channel, Bernard's side of the middleground, banked with straw. Out beyond them, in the main channel, untouched by mechanical contrivance or the bladed foot, new ice was glistering.

In mid afternoon I took down my skates from their nail in the mudroom. Blew the dust off them. Pulled on my black anorak and yellow windpants, and wandered downhill to Jimmy's, trailing dogs.

I've been fugged in since Christmas eve. Finished my last commission just before the patron pulled up the drive, and collapsed into a puddle of glup. Flu symptoms for Christmas, and slept through Boxing Day. Completely unraveled. Made it through the week on cruise control, I think. Might have something to do with all the Christmas chocolate.

Yesterday the deep damp cold slapped me upside the head. I jigtimed into a stiff northwester, heading down to the river, shivering with anticipation. Jimmy had yanked four camps onto the river since morning, and reported 6 inches, minimum, at his raceholes. High tide seeping out the shore cracks, open water by the bridge, a stone's throw upstream.

Tidewater heaves up the making ice twice daily, opening fissures, making a crazyquilt of the black ice, making it crack and boom. Sets the old adrenaline circulating. I lace up my skates, sitting on the rolling foot of Jimmy's ramp, hoist up and wibble off. The skating is perfect.

Bagel and CC refuse to go out on the channel ice, smooth as silk. They skitter along the edge of the woods, sticking to the rough ice over the flats. I'm spinning and gliding, trying to read the ice. Most places you can see the cracks and bubbles right through, and get a rough sense of the thickness. Where it's real thin, the ice sags a bit, and the fracture music notches up a tone. My heart sinks. The tempo quickens.

At low water the flats ice sits on ground, gets humped by the shore wrack. The catenary weight of the channel ice sags down over the deeper water, and breaks away, parallel to shore, creating a rift zone. Small plates cave and tilt, raft over one another and subside, bits of open water gape in the rift zone, and the rising water seeps out greenish on the flood. Wind-ruffle ridges the surface melt as it freezes, so the surface is dappled with textures on the curves and around the rifts. Cut crossways by fat cracks.

Rounding the corner by the double bridges the wind is hard at my back, and I'm flying into a new year.

Halfway down the next reach there's a rift zone that runs right across the Cathance, and jumping a cluster of rafted plates I see open water zigging across my path. Wooo. I'm side scooting and casting for thicker ice. There's a sickening snapping underfoot, and I'm breaking for the shore ice. Dodge through the rifts, and circle, panting, on a big clear spot.

CC is scrabbling along the shore edge a hundred yards back, but Bagel is right out of sight. Poor old stiff-legged thing. He's done pretty good keeping up on the snowpack this winter, but the ice is too much for him. He has trouble enough hauling himself up in the livingroom, and an arthritic dog spraddled on ice is an emblem of geriatric limitation. I decide to go back and find him. I'm only turning back cause of the dog, you understand.

Now the cold blast is full in my face, and I clown dance until I get traction. Angling out through the rough ice toward the channel again. Just can't resist that unblemished glaze. CC sticks to the flats. The old dog turns when he sees me, and starts scuttering for back. No fool he. My whiskers are a mask of condensed ice, and a finger tip is tingling where my gloves need mending. Maybe that's enough for a first outing. Just the barest sliver of a new moon.

Next day the air is almost still, bright sun, and it feels even colder, somehow. Bagel is the image of misery when I tell him to stay home. It's low tide, and CC refuses to go on the ice at all. Sits behind me on the steep angled ramp, listening to the crackle and snap of compressed ice. I've never noticed if she waits for the other old dog to go on the ice first. She doesn't trust this old dog at all.

It takes some serious calling to get CC to follow me today, and she still refuses to approach the channel ice. Fast and slick, it's glorious. As cold as it's been there must be two new inches overnight, I surmise, and I brazen the transverse rifts at full tilt. Come booming into Bernard's. Philip is dragging another camp onto the ice with a yard tractor, while Bert and Andy saw raceholes with a chainsaw, and set sill logs. Skating along beside the tractor I can feel the ice bend and the crackling is cacophonous. A nutty business.

After a brief jawing, while CC catches up, I set off round the bend, headed toward Shorey's. CC actually came onto the deepwater ice while we were all standing together, and huddled against my legs, but she abandons me for the flats again once I push off. She isn't that bright, though. She insists on paddling through the tidewater puddles alongshore, and is solid icicles from her belly down, her paws matted with ice.

I've been skating full out, and the frost is biting my lungs, now. Legs feel good, and my skates fit, but I'm slowing down. When I strike another transverse rift full of open water and thin ice, I figure maybe that's enough for today. We circle back. Kick and slide. I wave to the boys as I sashay by Bernard's, and keep a steady pace back up the Cathance to town. Finest kind.

I don't fly in dreams, but sometimes I glide over the night landscape. I've only started ice skating these past few years, and we get precious few spells when the river is perfect, so this New Years treat is like a rare dream. No headwind coming home. I hope you all have that kind of a new year.