Our Elusive Frozen Pond

Chances are that our pond froze over in the winter. For as long as we lived on our 50 acres of forest, I don’t remember anyone venturing to the pond in the winter. The only time we got close to the pond in cold weather was to hunt for our Christmas garland which only grew on the path going to the pond. Even when we hunted the garland it was so cold we could only think about getting back to the house with its fire place warming the living room and the hot chocolate we would be drinking in our comfortable chairs.

But I have to believe it was frozen for most of the winter and spring, because everything else was frozen. We lived in the high regions of the Appalachian mountains and the world was cold up there. Even if the pipes in the house froze, which I don’t recall them ever freezing closed, we had so many springs closer to the house where we could break through and get drinking water.

Our pond was not a human-made construct for practical use. I know it was fed by springs under the water, but we never used it except to make plaster of Paris molds of deer and animal prints, plus catching frogs and frog eggs to put in our aquariums. I don’t even think the pond held any fish, but nobody fished at the pond, except maybe bear (whose prints we would make molds of, of coarse). Even if there had been fish in the pond, we didn’t need to fish the pond since our Grandmother had months of food stocked in the house. We only went grocery shopping once a month in good weather, and we had stockpiles of canned goods.

I can only remember going shopping once or twice during the winter time. Our car was kept down at the end of the dirt road that connected our property to the main road, which also was semi-dirt, but plowed most of the time. Going anywhere in winter, especially grocery shopping, meant walking through high snow, and if you had groceries, using the bobsled to pull them down and up our dirt road the house. It was immensely easier to get everything before the snow set in and live off whatever we had stocked the house with.

We didn’t even need the pond to ice skate on. We had a huge ice skating rink in our yard. Our yard was a very large meadow—even as an adult it remained a huge area to me. There was a spring that created a stream surrounding our yard-meadow, then the stream would pass under the stone wall. The stone wall would get blocked up every winter and the stream would back up into the yard, creating this massive smooth area of ice. That is where we ice-skated, in our yard (though we did often go to the ice skating rink as an outing and where we watched ice-hockey and those taking ice skating lessons).

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I actually skated on a pond or a lake. I was appalled at the cracking sounds those frozen entities make. Throughout my childhood and teens I knew if I cracked through the ice while skating, my legs would only go down, at most, 6-12 inches, and I would survive (my skates might need to dry out and feet need to be warmed up, but I would be safe since the house was at the other end of the meadow). After my first foray onto a lake to go ice skating I decided to stick to our meadow, or an ice rink that made ice with pipes underneath the ice, because I didn’t like the cracks in the ice that occurred on an open lake, nor the sound of it.

Thinking back on our pond I would think that the springs kept the pond open, because I never saw the animals come down to our house springs to drink. As I said, with high snow throughout the winter, the journey to the pond would be incredibly cold and arduous. The pond itself wasn’t near the house, and on a summer day it would take 15 to twenty minutes to get there, so on a cold winter day it would take at least half an hour of trudging through high snow and slippery paths to get there.

There were better ways to spend winter days, like ice skating near the house, tobogganing down the hill next to the house-gardens, making snowmen and having snowball fights, or even sitting in front of the crackling fire watching the wildlife roaming through our meadow-yard. Plus, reading a good book while drinking hot chocolate is always the best way to spend a cold winter day.