I once listened to a man speak about how to make it through life while keeping our head above water.  Someone asked him about meditation.

“I tend to view meditation as an escape from the world, a form of distance.  We all have our escapes.  I find the world is always waiting for us when we get back.”

“Isn’t the point of meditation:  to escape the world in order to come back refocused?”

“That’s always been the idea, I think.  I’m just not sure I’ve ever seen it work.  It feels good, but distance usually does, and we tend to make whatever form we chose an end in itself.  What I’m interested in is how we might deal with the world by remaining and  becoming more present in it.”

For some men, to meditate is to fish, and it has been that way since ancient times.  Even Christ called a few of them from their boats.

For me, on the ice of Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, in a shack with a partner, over the low roar of the propane heater and staring at the lights of the Vexilar, I wasn’t aware of any distance.  In the stillness of waiting for a fish to bite, I thought it was all present.  The past, the dead, present worries, and the future.

A fish would bite, and they were gone.  Then things would get still, and they would come back.  Perhaps I never was much of a fisherman.

Sunday morning was the start of the third and final day.  At 6 am it was already starting to get slushy on the ice, as we drove down a boat ramp and out onto 90 miles of water in a Chevy Tahoe.

“You know I was nervous enough on Friday, when it was cold,” I commented to our 19-year-old guide.

“Don’t worry about the water.  It means the ice is still strong beneath it.  I don’t start to get nervous until the water disappears.  That means it is soaking through.

After it soaks through long enough, it leaves the ice honeycombed and gives it a hollow, crunchy sound.  When you hear that, you panic.  You’re about ready to fall through.

Today will be the last day we drive trucks out here.”

“Have you ever went in?”

“Last year was the first time.  The ice was getting thin and I was on a four-wheeler with my father.  He tried to blow over a crack in the ice, but the shelf he crossed over on was broke as well.  As he drove onto it, it stood up.  Dad jumped, but I was backwards on the rear rack and daydreaming.  When I hit the water, it was so cold I clenched my fists, and rode the four wheeler all the way to the bottom.  It felt like it took five minutes to get to the surface again.”

“What did you think of that?”

“That will wake you right up.”

I had no doubt.

Friday was cold and blustery, and I spent most of the day with my foot holding the frame of our shack down so it didn’t flip over.  Saturday was the big day catching fish.  Sunday we caught walleye before the sun came up, but after that, moving to deeper water for perch, all most of us caught was a buzz.

We wouldn’t mind it none.  The temperature climbed into the mid 50’s.  The sun above us beckoned.  One by one we flipped back the tarps which had been keeping the cold out and our thoughts in, and we sat on the ice in the sun.

Looking out at the expanse we sat on, I thought of our guide.  Someday we will all make the plunge beneath the cracked and shrinking ice.  Today wasn’t the day, though.

We set our poles down, and on the winter ice, in the springtime sun, the boys of summer played ball.  On Friday we caught the wind.  On Saturday we caught fish.  On Sunday we caught a good time, with the whole world beneath our feet.  Namaste.