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It was an odd morning in the middle of February last year when I awoke in the early morning in our cottage on Mullett Lake in Cheboygan County. The baseboard heaters were silent as ghosts. Without a whisper of wind the house was warm like springtime. I got out of bed without disturbing Sal or our aging Jack Russell terrier who sleeps between us most nights. I checked the thermometer at the side of the kitchen door as I poured a big cup of coffee. It was 48 degrees. The last month we’d seen record cold, highs in the teens most days, but winter had turned on a dime during the night.
As I flipped on the back yard lights to look for Maizie coming back for her morning meal, I saw a drizzly dreary fog and it was raining.
In two hours I was scheduled to meet the regional TV people over in St. Ignace along with a crew from the Weather Channel who were coming up from Atlanta to capture some pre-tournament film about one of the largest hockey tournaments in North America. It’s played on almost 30 rinks constructed on Moran Bay right on Lake Huron. My heart sank like a stone thrown from the end of the dock in summer. The ice is melting, I thought. The ice is melting.
I grabbed my bag full of notes for the shoot and my laptop. I pulled my mittens out in disgust. I slogged my way to the truck. The snowy yard steamed around me. I checked my iPhone weather app as I settled behind the wheel… warm through tomorrow then back to pretty cold again. The tournament was scheduled to begin in 24 hours.
Driving west on Riggsvile Road, I was nearly blind in the grey gloom. On the interstate highway it wasn’t much better. It took me an hour to crawl through the soup to the bridge. “Why now?’ I kept saying as I inched the truck over the Straits. At mid-point of my crossing I broke through the endless cloud and the rain stopped but then I descended into the mist again.
I hid my worries all morning and into the early afternoon as TV crews interviewed the tournament Director, toured the Labatt’s headquarters tent, and filmed the small “chalet” built on the ice as deluxe accommodations for one of the teams from Canada. I watched as the last cameraman was driven out to a complex network of rinks shrouded by the deepening fog.
It was an odd morning in the middle of February last year when I awoke in the early morning in our cottage on Mullett Lake in Cheboygan County. The baseboard heaters were silent as ghosts. Without a whisper of wind the house was warm like springtime. I got out of bed without disturbing Sal or our aging Jack Russell terrier who sleeps between us most nights. I checked the thermometer at the side of the kitchen door as I poured a big cup of coffee. It was 48 degrees. The last month we’d seen record cold, highs in the teens most days, but winter had turned on a dime during the night.
As I flipped on the back yard lights to look for Maizie coming back for her morning meal, I saw a drizzly dreary fog and it was raining.
In two hours I was scheduled to meet the regional TV people over in St. Ignace along with a crew from the Weather Channel who were coming up from Atlanta to capture some pre-tournament film about one of the largest hockey tournaments in North America. It’s played on almost 30 rinks constructed on Moran Bay right on Lake Huron. My heart sank like a stone thrown from the end of the dock in summer. The ice is melting, I thought. The ice is melting.
I grabbed my bag full of notes for the shoot and my laptop. I pulled my mittens out in disgust. I slogged my way to the truck. The snowy yard steamed around me. I checked my iPhone weather app as I settled behind the wheel… warm through tomorrow then back to pretty cold again. The tournament was scheduled to begin in 24 hours.
Driving west on Riggsvile Road, I was nearly blind in the grey gloom. On the interstate highway it wasn’t much better. It took me an hour to crawl through the soup to the bridge. “Why now?’ I kept saying as I inched the truck over the Straits. At mid-point of my crossing I broke through the endless cloud and the rain stopped but then I descended into the mist again.
I hid my worries all morning and into the early afternoon as TV crews interviewed the tournament Director, toured the Labatt’s headquarters tent, and filmed the small “chalet” built on the ice as deluxe accommodations for one of the teams from Canada. I watched as the last cameraman was driven out to a complex network of rinks shrouded by the deepening fog.
“It’ll freeze good tonight,” said a voice from behind me. I turned and shook the hand of a middle aged man in a Red Wings jacket I’d never met before. He’d just arrived from downstate with his team, one of 160 scheduled for the first round of games in the morning. “Don’t look so worried. This kind of stuff doesn’t last long.”
“I know. I’m just the worrying type.”
I told him about my efforts to get more press coverage of the tournament, how I’d been thinking that the beauty of the St. Ignace harbor in winter, the majesty of the Straits of Mackinac, and the awesome spread of hockey rinks wouldn’t look like much on TV because of the weather.
“Who cares? It’s all about hockey. It’s about our love for playing the game, the old way. You know, the way the game started on neighborhood ponds a long time ago.”
The man asked me to join his teammates at the Driftwood Bar for a beer and I accepted. I sat with them in a booth for a couple of hours and listened to their stories about the tournament the year before, how it was barely zero outside, and how they played through a whiteout blizzard on top of the cold. They lost every game they played.
For the first time in ages I recounted my best moment playing hockey, a weekend series playing against the National Champs in Madison, Wisconsin where I played every other shift at defense. I told my new found friends how even though we lost both those games not a goal was scored while I was on the ice. I did watch a couple go in from the penalty box.
That night back home, as Sal and I got ready for bed, our house creaked with the sudden drop in temperature. I lay in bed for a while unable to sleep. When I got up to make a fire in the wood burning stove, I saw stars shining over the lake and their reflections sparkling on the ice. A crescent sliver moon rose above the eastern horizon three miles across the lake.
The next morning was the most beautiful cold day of mid-winter you could possibly imagine. The weatherman had been wrong once again. The bitter air from the artic had arrived earlier than expected. At the hockey championship, I watched players battle and shoot pucks on the best ice surfaces they’d ever dreamed of, with a bright blue sky and powerless sun overhead. The rinks that were puddles the day before were now smooth as glass and hard as granite. It was a perfect day for a game of hockey.
Editors Note: St. Ignace hosts the 2012 Pond Hockey
Tournament on Moran Bay February 17-19.
Donald Holmes Lewis writes Back Up North for the Mackinac Journal. Two years of weekly columns written for the Cheboygan Daily Tribune may be read online at www.backupnorth.com. A collection of columns is available at the newspaper office in downtown Cheboygan and at Amazon. He lives on Mullett Lake with his wife, author Sally Savic.
