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I didn’t know what I was getting into. How was I supposed to? I’m from New York City, and the closest thing we have to ice fishing is picking out chilled tuna filets in Chinatown. All of my preconceived notions about it came from “Grumpy Old Men.” Yet as I packed my friend Finney’s Toyota Tacoma on a brisk February evening with enough supplies to last three days and nights on a frozen lake in Minnesota, I couldn’t help but obsessively think of all the things that could go wrong. What had seemed like an abstract idea when we excitedly planned the trip a few months prior was about to become a reality.
Finney, a born-and-raised Minnesotan in his mid-30s with long, wavy hair, and a scraggly beard, did his best to reassure me. We’d been good friends for 10 years, and I had no reason to believe he’d put us in a dangerous situation, especially because he was a new father. Plus, we were doing the ice fishing equivalent of glamping. He rented an ice house that would be waiting on the lake for us, complete with pre-augered holes. All we’d need to do is show up with bait and lures. Rummaging through supplies, Finney held up a cable that looked like it had two Jeopardy buzzers on either side.
“Besides, if anything goes wrong and it looks like we might fall in, we’ll have these,” he said.
“What are they?” I asked.
“Ice picks. You wear them like this and keep ‘em on the insides of the sleeves of your jacket.” He draped the device around his neck, holding each end in his hands to demonstrate. “If you fall in, you use them to stab onto the ice and pull yourself up.”
This didn’t make me feel any safer. Lingering thoughts of what could go wrong began spinning around in my head again. What if his truck fell through the ice? What if the weather took an unexpected turn? What if we were sleeping? How would we escape the ice house if it was submerged?
“Don’t worry, only a few people fall in a year.” He took a beat, reading the concern on my face. “We’ll be fine.”
I was worried about getting good sleep on the lake, but didn’t anticipate spending half of the night before our trip watching YouTube videos about how to survive ice accidents and Googling statistics on ice fishing deaths in Minnesota. (4.6 deaths per winter season from 1987 through 2022, most of which were the result of people being reckless on unsafe ice.)
Finney and I had recently gone through some seismic shifts in our lives. My marriage to my partner of almost 20 years had just ended in divorce. Finney and his wife had just given birth to a beautiful baby girl. As I drifted off to sleep, I began to realize that maybe, subconsciously, we planned this trip not just as an exciting getaway, but to give us something different in life to be scared about.
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM We arrived at our destination, Chisago Lake , the next morning. Brilliant sunlight beamed off the lake, belying the frigid temperatures. As Finney slowly pulled his truck onto the ice, he turned down his radio to call our host. I began to notice the groans of ice cracking around us. I shifted anxiously in my seat as he finished the call.
“Is that sound what I think it is?” I asked. Finney seemed nonplussed by the groaning ice.
“Don’t worry about it. That’s totally normal.”
He pulled up, stopping his Tacoma about 30 yards from the shelter.
“Why don’t we pull up a little closer? We have all the supplies to unpack,” I asked.
“Weight displacement. We’ll get a little closer when he leaves.”
This did not feel normal.
As we got out of the truck, we were met with frigid air and a warm greeting. A man dressed head-to-toe in brown camouflage waved us over and introduced himself as he began giving us a tour of the ice house. It was almost identical to a modern, mid-sized RV, equipped with a mini fridge, stove, TV, bathroom, and a dining area that converted into a bed. The appliances were powered by a generator that sat outside. The only thing that distinguished it from a camper were the six glowing, aquamarine holes on the floor and the fishing lines that sat above them. After giving us a few helpful tips, the man wished us luck and drove off, slowly disappearing into the horizon.
We pulled up the Tacoma as he pulled away. We unpacked our provisions, which mostly consisted of food, beverages, and drugs. By the time we were totally settled in, the winter sun was fading. After a beautiful sunset walk, we tied our lures, set our bait, and dropped our lines. My anxiety began to slowly subside. Fishing became secondary to conversation.
“Right before going to sleep, I decided to check my location on Google Maps. I was lying on a bed, but on the screen I was a blue dot in the middle of a lake. I felt the kind of profound isolation and loneliness that I imagine astronauts must feel on the moon.”
We got a few bites, but failed to reel anything in, replacing our wax worm bait each time. After serving the Chisago walleyes dinner, we prepared a Minnesota-made Heggie’s frozen pizza, which we washed down with some Athletic beers and Lagunitas Hoppy Refreshers. Right before going to sleep, I decided to check my location on Google Maps. I was lying on a bed, but on the screen I was a blue dot in the middle of a lake. I felt the kind of profound isolation and loneliness that I imagine astronauts must feel on the moon.
The next morning began with abundant sunshine and hearty breakfast sandwiches with some of Finney’s homegrown (non-psychedelic) mushrooms. Rain was in the forecast for the next day, our last on the lake, so we decided to abandon our rods to go for some long walks out onto the ice. Snowmobiles would pass us by, the ice would crack, and I’d wince less every time. The snow deadened the sound around us. There was something eerily serene about walking around aimlessly on a frozen, barren landscape.
Occasionally, we’d head back to check our lures, only to find our bait had been taken. At least we knew that when we finally caught a fish, they’d be nice and plump from all the wax worms they’d be eating. We got a handful of bites that night, too, but failed to reel anything in. Two days, and we hadn’t caught anything apart from a couple of beautiful sunsets and a decent buzz. No matter. A rainy day ahead meant that all we’d have to do is fish.
THE DELUGE The sound of rain pelting the roof of the ice house woke us the next morning, overpowering the generator’s hum. When we opened the curtains, we found that the pristine, snow-covered lake had reverted to a sheet of ice that reflected the gray sky. The temperatures had risen to the upper 30s.
It was late in the season, and warmth and rain meant that the already-thin ice that separated us from the frigid water would deteriorate even more quickly. We briefly considered packing up and leaving, but it looked like the rain would stop later in the afternoon, so we decided to stick it out. With nothing better to do in the meantime, we set our lures, and decided to take some LSD. We figured it might help us discover some deep, cosmic truths out there on the lake. If not, we’d at least catch a good buzz. As the acid began to kick in, we noticed some other ice houses being pulled off of the lake. We briefly wondered about our safety, but figured that if we were in danger, we’d have heard from the guy who owned ours.
The pouring rain finally subsided into a drizzle in the late afternoon, so we decided to take one last daylit walk on the lake. Wearing microspikes and carefully avoiding augered holes where ice houses once stood, we marveled at the drastically changed landscape. Chisago Lake, one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes, seemingly had another 10,000 lakes scattered and pooled across it. The sun began to set, and the rain picked up again, so we made our way back.
We made dinner, which consisted of another Heggie’s pizza, chicken fingers, and more LSD. After a couple of hours, Finney remarked that the rain hadn’t stopped yet. It was 7:00. I tried to check the weather, but the acid was making all the buttons on my iPhone move. Eventually the weather app icon held still long enough for me to press it.
The forecast had changed: 100% chance of rain until 11:00. There was nothing we could do about it now. Rain clouds obscured the moonlight, engulfing the ice house in darkness. Ice melted around us, while the effects of the LSD were amplified by the minute. Everyday objects moved and rippled like water and a nervous energy coursed through my body. There was a helpless anxiety to knowing that there was no way to un-take the second dose we’d just swallowed. My heart began to pound as the desperation of the situation sank in. We spent the next few hours letting the generator do most of the talking. The fishing lines became an afterthought and a sense of disquiet filled the room. At around 11:00, I opened the door to step outside.
The rain had stopped, and a wall of fog had descended upon the lake. The only thing that was visible was Finney’s truck; the shore and any remaining ice houses were now completely obscured. As I stepped out onto the lake, what were small puddles were now giant pools. My boots were almost entirely submerged.
“Hey man! I think we might have a problem!” I shouted back through the door.
“What’s up?”
“Just come out here!”
He appeared in the doorway, and his jaw dropped.
“What do we do?” I asked.
He doubled back into the ice house, and I walked back to the door. From inside, he tossed a cord at me.
“Put this on.”
I untangled the cord and realized what it was: the ice picks. My stomach dropped.
“Does the lake seem like it’s moving?” he asked.
I looked out back over my shoulder. It did. I’m not sure if it was the LSD, but it felt like we were bobbing up and down on an iceberg. I put the ice picks around my neck and slid them down my sleeves one at a time. My palms dripped with sweat as I gripped the ends tightly.
Finney looked off distantly for a moment. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
He put on his spikes and went outside. Seconds later, I heard his truck start up. For a second, I thought he might have been taking the Tacoma like a lifeboat back to shore, but he returned to the ice house a couple of minutes later. Finney had moved the truck to displace its weight further from the shelter. Every move felt more precarious.
Fear gripped us, and we began to discuss our options. Neither of us were in any shape to drive, and even if we could, it would be too dangerous to navigate back to shore with the fog and a minefield of augered holes around us. It was almost midnight. We had no choice but to stay put. Then Finney’s eyes widened.
“The generator!”
He sprung into action and again ventured outside into the eerie, blurred landscape. The generator was barely clearing the water. If it became submerged, not only would we lose power, but we’d risk being electrocuted in the water that was pooling around us. Thinking quickly, he began to gather snow from a pile that had been cleared to create a path to the ice house. In the meantime, I wandered around the surreal landscape. He cut the generator, and we were enveloped in silence. As he came back around to the front of the ice house, he stopped near the hitch.
“I think we might have another problem,” he said. “Have you seen this?”
I walked over. Under a pool of water, a crack had formed, stretching underneath the ice house. It seemed to be growing larger by the second. We went back inside and checked the augered holes. The water level was rising. We were completely at the mercy of Chisago Lake.
“Resigned to our fate, the conversation gradually shifted to the recent transitions in our lives. We talked with the kind of candor that’s usually reserved for people on their deathbeds.”
The fear was overwhelming, intensified by the effects of the LSD. I was questioning my grip on reality, along with every decision that led us to this predicament. Finney and I tried our best to convince each other that we’d be okay, but it was clear that we had our doubts. My body was vibrating. Resigned to our fate, the conversation gradually shifted to the recent transitions in our lives. We talked with the kind of candor that’s usually reserved for people on their deathbeds. Fears about the future felt small in the face of our mortality, which provided us with a peculiar sense of comfort as the night wore on. We were simultaneously ready to die and ready to live.
THROUGH THE FOG The fog finally lifted at 3:00 AM. We could see that there were still a few ice houses out there, some of which were lit, providing us with a small sense of security. With the LSD wearing off, we decided to try to get some rest. As we got into bed, we heard a vehicle approaching. We peered out the window. A four-wheeler whizzed by, pulling an ice house behind it. Shortly thereafter, another.
“That’s not a good sign,” I said. “See you in the morning… hopefully.” The hug of the ice pick around my neck provided me with just enough solace to fall asleep.
We woke to the sound of Finney’s phone pinging. There was a moment of confusion, then elation. We were alive! It was a text from our host, asking if we were still there.
He seemed surprised we were still on the lake, and explained that he was going to pull the ice house off in preparation for even nastier weather ahead. It finally occurred to us that the kind of people who spend a good portion of their winter sleeping on frozen lakes might not be the best barometers of safety. We quickly packed up and drove off the lake in complete silence until we finally reached shore, where we finally exhaled in relief.
“The feeling of being close to death had provided me with the same kind of perspective on my life that the mirror was providing of the lake. Maybe those objects of my anxiety are smaller than they appear.”
As we drove away, I watched the lake disappear in the sideview mirror, reflecting on how much the landscape had transformed from a few days prior, and how we had changed along with it. The feeling of being close to death had provided me with the same kind of perspective on my life that the mirror was providing of the lake. Maybe those objects of my anxiety are smaller than they appear.

Life can seem to shift suddenly, but like the landscape around us, it’s ever-changing. Sometimes we have no choice but to embrace those changes, to weather those storms. The landscape of our lives ahead was mutable, too, but after a few days on Chisago Lake, it didn’t seem nearly as scary as it did when we arrived.
Words + Photos by Mark LaFaro

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