Ted from the mill knew that Leroy was planning to launch his ice hut on this day and arrived at the abandoned pickup about fifteen minutes later. He knew exactly where the ice hut would be set up and headed out across the frozen river. When he rounded the bend and saw nothing but his shiny flue with his top-hat swinging around to greet him, he imagined the worst. He ran to the edge of the rectangular hole fashioned by the subsiding ice hut, but realized he could do nothing to save his friend entombed below the ice. He scrambled back along the auger gouges to his car and raced into town to raise the alarm.
Meanwhile, Leroy was kneeling beside his grandfather’s grave, detailing his foolishness to the one family member he had more respect for than any other. To have lost his grandfather’s ice hut was the very worst event that could happen in his life. He had never had children and there was no one to leave the hut to when he died. He had always worried about what would become of the hut after his passing. Every way he tried to explain it to his grandfather, sounded like an excuse. He felt like a foolish child who had damaged a precious tool in his grandfather’s workshop. When he ran out of excuses and words, his grandfather’s silence became unbearable and he stood up and retraced his steps back to his pickup truck. He dawdled towards the sirens wailing in the distance.
When Leroy crested the rise leading down to his truck, the river resembled a scene out of a TV search and rescue show – red and blue lights were flashing against the snow, an ambulance was parked next to his pickup with its open tailgate, police and firemen were stringing ropes across the river towards the ice hut, and a crowd of concerned townsfolk was assembled on the riverbank. When Leroy finally reached his pickup, Ted saw him first and his eyes widened. He had called the whole town out, but his friend was alive, dry and perfectly well.
Ted was in a huddle with the police captain, an ambulance driver and the young council engineer in his hard hat and hi viz vest. As Leroy approached the group, he heard another noise from around the bend that sounded like that bulldozer clearing the forest. At the same instant that the three men turned to face Leroy, a shout drew his gaze across the river. There above the trees, at the end of the outstretched arm of the new Council front end loader, and suspended by a rope tied to Ted’s gleaming flue, was his grandfather’s ice hut, swinging from side to side and spewing water from under the door and out of the broken window.
This was a turning point in Leroy’s life. They fully recovered his grandfather’s ice hut and he lovingly restored it to its former glory. But it is no longer chained to the waxed, redwood rails on the bank of the Yukon waiting for its winter adventure. Leroy donated his treasure to the Council Historical Society, and once a year he gives a talk to school children about the subtle art of ice fishing. Part of the talk includes his story about the day the hut vanished below the ice, and how the sole cause was climate change. Each year he embellishes the cautionary tale just a little more, to inspire the children to join his environmental group to fight for climate action. And if his telling enhances his own heroic role in the story, he is sure that the end justifies the means.
