Minnewaska Musings

by Paul Gremmels

I hadn’t been ice fishing for a few decades, so I called on an old friend of mine who is an avid ice angler. Before I could invite myself out to his fish-house he already had our trip planned for a Tuesday afternoon. He told me a time and which access to meet him at, as he would lead the way out to his fish-house that was in a sizable ice fishing village in the middle of Lake Minnewaska.

I met my friend at the appointed access in my pickup truck. He was sitting in his truck on the ice and beckoned me to follow him. Driving out onto the ice is not for the faint of heart. It’s really not for the sound-minded either, but having grown up here, I was used to the idea of driving on a frozen lake. I was not, however, by any means accustomed to actually doing it. I rolled my windows down and began wondering about my insurance coverage.

My friend’s fish-house is not one of the gigantic structures with all the latest amenities. It is a small, modest and efficient homemade house that proved to be very comfortable. Each corner has a small opening with a hole drilled through the ice. In two of the holes we ran lines down from the rattle-reels that were attached to the adjacent walls. We baited these hooks with sucker minnows in hopes of catching a walleye or northern. The other two holes we pulled up chairs next to and used short spinning poles, baited with small jigs and wax worms to try and tempt some panfish into biting. The action was fairly steady and by the end of the afternoon we had caught a couple of northerns and a handful of nice sized sunfish.

But fishing isn’t always about catching fish. Otherwise, as the joke goes, they would call it catching, not fishing. More often, I think, fishing is a time of contemplation and if you’re with someone, a time of contemplated conversation. My friend and I may not have the same political, religious or philosophical beliefs, but we both enjoy each other’s company and discussions that require some critical thinking skills. We of course, solved a few of the world’s problems in that fish-house that afternoon, and came to the general conclusion that far too many people spend far too much time and energy being angry.

I stared down into the ice hole and thought it to be a type of crystal ball. The daylight from the outside seemed to illuminate it from within, creating a soft, translucent, blue-green glow. My friend is active in a local group called, “Be Kind” whose founding principle is simple enough – be kind.  He made a comment about the power of random acts of kindness. I nodded in agreement and looked back into my crystal ball. Staring into its transfixing glow, an R. W. Emerson quote came to me:

“You can never be too kind too soon.

For you never know when too soon –

Will become too late.”