Talk about a long winter and it’s not over yet. However, it’s clear that Lake Michigan will not freeze over again. I’ve never seen anything quite so dramatic and in some cases scary. Two young people died this year trying to retrieve a dropped smart phone on the ice. The first person went under. First person reaches up and pulls second person through the ice. The third person tried to reach over and grab the hand of the second person, a 25-year-old young lady. He began to glide toward the ice and let go the hand of his girlfriend of almost three years. The struggle in the water lasted less than a minute. Enough to supply a lifetime of night terrors, but there wasn’t the thrashing and screaming of some summertime drownings. Kick, soft kick, desperate scissor kick, tread for 20 seconds and down into the dark gray, but not straight down, down and into the current traveling weightlessly at two miles per hour under the ice.
Ralph Braseth 