Midwestern Dates
by KARA VANDERBIJL
5 minutes: Pay $14.95 for an Illinois fishing license
3 minutes: Put on old jeans, two shirts, a sweatshirt, socks from the Army/Navy surplus store, snow boots, down-filled coat, hat, and fleece-lined mittens
7 minutes: Load the sled with the necessities, e.g., beer, whiskey, an empty plastic bucket, an auger, a skimmer, two poles, two plastic condiment containers filled with wood shavings and maggots, a sonar scope, a heater named—no joke—"portable buddy"
15 minutes: Drag sled across frozen lake towards the best fishing spot, into the wind, trying not to slip
~2 minutes: Reach the other huts, realize I'm the only other woman on the ice
1 minute: Screw the auger into the ice until a deep scent, reminiscent of summer, pokes through the freeze and water bubbles through the hole
1 minute: Repeat
1 minute: Skim slushy lake water off the surface, stare deep into the murky hole
20 minutes: Attempt to raise the collapsible shelter in 20-30 mph gusts
3 minutes: Sit inside the shelter, freezing, while Jens attempts to tie down the back flaps
2 minutes: Scream when the wind catches the shelter through the open door and drags the whole thing three yards across the ice with me in it
2 minutes: Watch as Jens slips and slides after the fish bucket and a single glove that have blown away
10 minutes: Figure out how to fortify the shelter against the wind with a series of disconnected metal poles and no instruction manual
1 minute: Breathe gas as the portable buddy kindles to life
30 seconds: Stab a maggot with a hook
30 seconds: Drop the line into the hole and watch the bait flicker green on the sonar scope
20 minutes: Wait for fish
2 minutes: Laugh when Fleetwood Mac starts playing on Pandora. "It's like they know," I explain to Jens.
30 minutes: Wait for fish
5 minutes: Have to pee, pull down pants, squat over the hole, feel like the most ridiculous being that has ever walked the planet
30 minutes: Wait for fish
3 minutes: Hear a conversation —
"Don't walk through the snow, you'll break your fucking leg."
"It's not as slippery!"
"The snow could be covering a 10 inch hole, you idiot."
2 minutes: Study the intricate patterns crystallizing inside the strata of the ice
3 minutes: Freak out, briefly, about the fact that all however many hundreds of pounds of us are sitting on eight inches of ice above twenty feet of water
1 minute: Marvel
20 minutes: Drink a beer that's so cold it makes my teeth hurt
5 minutes: Squat over the hole again
2 minutes: Attempt to tickle Jens through five layers of clothing
2 hours: Wait for fish
10 minutes: Insult fish
30 minutes: Wait for fish
5 minutes: Decide to call it a day
25 minutes: Pack it all up, slip-slide across the lake back the house hand-in-hand
Kara VanderBijl is the managing editor of This Recording. You can subscribe to Hors Sujet here.
Paintings by Katherine Bradford.
"Sail" - Awolnation (mp3)
