God's Thunder

Crunch, crunch, crunch went my boots, as I walked over the winter's snow from the snowmobile to the portable nylon fish house. It was only in those few steps that I realized what a day it was. It was a day like few before it. The wind was blowing as viciously as those summer twisters, causing the sides of the fish house to flap violently back and forth, regardless of the metal support beams inside. Miles from shore, and struggling to even make out which direction shore actually is, we drop our lines in the bitter cold water of Lake of the Woods. Ice immediately forms on the polypropylene bridge between us, and hopefully dinner. Relaxing in the little shelter we have, as the hum of the propane lantern softly sings across the little space, we look outside at our tip-ups, barely being able to see the bright orange flag still resting on the snow. Suddenly, and gone again as quickly as it started, a gigantic thunder like boom echoes across the vast, empty ice on the lake. The ice shifted drastically as a result. We undeniably moved due to the shaking from the enormous boom a few seconds earlier. How far did we move? The tip-ups are no long visible from the ice-covered windows. The safety of shore is still not visible either. What do we do? The depth finder says we are at 23 feet of water. A shiver runs down my spine because 23 feet is not where we started earlier in the day. We were at 18 feet. How far did we actually move? As we look at our life saving tool from God, the Global Positioning System (GPS), we have actually moved two tenths of a mile since the boom. Now, we were on an iceboat, getting a winter tour of the nothingness of the lake. Getting our gear together, we put everything in the trailer to be towed behind the snowmobile, hop on, and follow our electronic path to safety. We didn't catch any fish that day.