Seated on a rock just feet from the edge of an ice field, there was a curious tension.
It was like waiting for a monster to awake. Would it be worth photographing an array of serrated fangs if massive jaws suddenly clamped tight around my scrawny neck? At least it would be a great parting shot.
“I hope you’ve got good legs,” a fellow spectator said. “When the ice moves, it could rush up the bank.”
We were sitting half-way down a bank of the Freeman River on Easter Monday, waiting for the ice to break.
I thought it would be a must-see Fort Assiniboine tradition, something steeped in folklore and mysticism, but only a handful of people showed up in the afternoon to take a peek.
Perhaps locals had seen it too often to care any more. To a non-Canadian eye, the ice floes are something to behold; the landscape could have belonged to a far-off planet.
Vast swathes of ridged and fractured white – it looked as if a plough had churned much of the ice into mulch – were punctuated by patches of water. It was towards these pools that eyes and ears were drawn. The water constantly hissed and fizzed; little whirlpools broke out, suggesting a seething underground energy.
Occasionally a black block of ice bust the surface, redolent of a crocodile rearing its ferocious head. Once or twice I fancied I saw the dead eyes of a creature without pity. The hours passed almost unnoticed. Shortly after 6 p.m. the river groaned and I braced myself.
There was a sound of cracking as thousands of icy fragments heaved en masse – some bulged and fused into huge boulders.
The monster had awoken, old bones creaking as it rose unsteadily to its feet.
It seemed an unstoppable force had started. A slow movement was gathering momentum.
I clicked repeatedly as a black-edged chunk of ice, the size of four refrigerators, powered towards me. As the pressure increased, fissures appeared in the slab. It seemed about to crumble. Should I run?
It was now almost within touching distance.
And then without warning the monster slumped to its stomach, as if weary or bored. It had travelled about 20 feet.
There was an eerie, improbable silence.
At first I suspected a ruse. Surely at any moment the mass movement would restart, perhaps with greater intensity. I had grown bold again and began taunting the creature.
“Come on you little worm, show us what you’ve got,” I thought. But as the minutes turned into hours my sense of anticipation and patience began to wane. By 9 p.m. my reasons for leaving were multiplying: light was fading, the temperature had dropped, the nearby convenience store had shut, and the ice seemed to have settled down for the night. Nature wasn’t remotely interested in my schedule.
It had been only half a show.
But, hey, what a half. And it had been free.
