When I was a kid, I couldn't wait for spring. I liked running down to the lake before all of the ice had gone. The water was always really clear and still at that time of year. I imagined that must be what the Arctic Ocean would be like. The lake was at the end of the street I grew up on. When you got halfway down the block you could feel the air would be chilled all of the sudden from the ice. There'd be huge piles of ice on the shore from the wind blowing it in. I always thought it was too bad that lake was so small. But when I got older, a friend from Arizona was with me and said she had never seen a lake that big, amazed that she couldn't see anything but the water all the way to the horizon. In the scheme of things, it always seemed like a pool between lakes. But I guess from the perspective of someone not from this region it seemed different.