Ice Fishing

In my part of the world, a lot of men spend a lot of time out on the ice,
for the most part sitting and contemplating a hole in the ice. Much of this
is done at night, or at least in darkness, since the sun sets at 5 PM. Some
of them are in elaborate houses, with heat and electricity and all that that
implies, others are outside sitting on overturned 5-gallon buckets, exposed
to the elements. A lot of them are getting drunk. And they are all staring
down into those dark holes, waiting.

Last night I saw the beautiful documentary, Rivers and Tides, about Andy
Goldsworthy, a sculptor who creates things outdoors out of stones and leaves
and sticks and ice and so on. One of his recurring themes is dark holes.
They appeared in his work after the death of his young sister-in-law, which
left a dark hole in the lives of his family. A dark hole, he says, draws you
into it the same way a sheer cliff attracts you to its edge. Dark holes are
about a stark transition between two worlds, a portal through which life
both ebbs and flows. They are about mortality.

...And here in Minnesota, a bunch of good old boys, out on the nighttime
ice, staring down into dark holes, waiting.