Winter. It might not be over but it hardly feels like it ever began. Maybe I should watch what I say. As Minnesota-native, Bob Dylan, once sang in Idiot Wind, “change in the weather is known to be extreme.”

The sun had yet to rise. Across the dark expanse of lake, I could see the downtown skyscrapers of Minneapolis lit up prettily in the distance. I shook my head at the absence of snow, and pulled my sled laden with ice fishing gear over the dead grass and wet mud.

The temperature was in the upper thirties with little wind, so I left my portable shack at home. I hardly needed gloves. There was a solid 8 inches of clear ice on the lake though. The Metro lakes finally froze over in late January thanks to a week of subzero weather.

But that didn’t last. It’s February in Minnesota and people are finding ticks. Lately, I see joggers in shorts while I deliver mail in a sweater and I feel disoriented as if I blacked out and woke up in April or in Florida. I’m troubled by it because maybe Al Gore and Greta Thunberg are right. I’ve been biking to work but I don’t think that’s going to effect the climate.

I made it onto the frozen lake and pulled the sled in the direction of my favorite point. I walked gingerly, the ice crackling under my spiked boots. It wasn’t long before I was fishing, two lines in the water. I didn’t even have to drill any holes. The ones from last evening never froze over. Hoping to catch a walleye, I baited a slip-bobber rig with a minnow and put it just off the bottom. I threaded a wax worm onto a tungsten jig and twitched that at various depths. After a few minutes, I switched to a minnow on the jig and started working the bobber rig up the water column in search of suspended crappies. What a terrible year for ice fishing! Out of three outings, I’d only managed to catch a three-inch perch. I don’t know what it is about me and fishing. It’s kind of like sex. When I don’t get any, I dream about it. Reality has a tough time living up to my dreams.

I was fishing a popular spot, the lake spotted with holes. I moved further from shore, trying my luck in different places. The sun had risen over the horizon and I appeared to be the only one on the lake. I felt peace and gratitude, glad I bothered getting out even if the fish weren’t cooperating. I watched a bald eagle circle over the point and a while later a crow landed on the ice where I had been fishing to snack on my discarded bait.

With a sense of pessimism, I tried one last spot where I had caught bluegills the year before and drilled myself two fresh holes with my Finnish auger. Most ice fisherman use lithium-battery powered augers these days. Sometimes I feel judged because I use such primitive equipment. But with sharp blades, it only takes me a couple minutes to get through the ice, and the effort required warms my body.

I checked the time on my phone and glumly decided to call it quits. I didn’t want to be late for work. Before departing the lake, I took pictures of the frizzled mosaics that nature’s Etch-a- Sketch had created in the ice.

Waiting at a stop light, I observed someone in the median hunched in a wheelchair with a blanket over their head. Such a bleak image, I thought. The negativity of city life gets me down sometimes and I question why I continue to live here. As I was making a right turn, we made eye contact. It was a Native American man with high cheekbones and a hawk nose. I felt a pang of sympathy for his desperation and impulsively made a U-turn at the next light. I handed him a twenty-dollar bill with Andrew Jackson’s portrait on it. He seemed thankful and relieved. This small act of kindness probably won’t bestow any future luck upon me from the fishing gods, but it made me feel better about my morning, as if it had all served some purpose.

My wife was cleaning up the kitchen when I opened the back door. I set my bucket on the rug.

“You want to see all the fish I brought home?”

“Sure,” she said.

I lifted the lid and showed her all my minnows.