The bitter cold of the air stings wherever it can reach-your cheeks and nose, and down in the depths of your lungs if you inhale too sharply. The brilliance of the sun is just an irony in this frosty, quiet, early winter afternoon. The frozen valley is silent, seemingly void of any animate life but your own.

It is not easy to sit still at this temperature. You have to remember you are listening for something muffled, something special. The call of a distant woodpecker is welcome, a reminder that you are not really so lonely as you may have thought, but it is not the sound you are after.

There it is. Mysterious, otherworldly, it has two parts-a boom, and an echo. The boom is the sound of someone striking a monstrous bass drum. It is a deep thud, without a clear beginning or end. The second part is an echo in timing only-a different sound from the thud. It is part sigh, part gurgle, as if the water is surging in response to the initial boom. The sound of the surge is muffled by the intervening layer of ice. The boom is loud, the echo soft and liquid. The depth of the sound suggests vast energy, being released and absorbed.

We are still in the downswing of daily temperatures, though the days are marginally longer than they have been. The coldest weather lies ahead. The river is about its business of making ice.

At rapids and falls upstream, I have heard the music of the river, a song that carries on cheerfully, 24 hours of the day, 365 days of the year. Here on this quiet stretch, however, the river has no voice but this boom and its echo, just these few days of the year. Neither cheery nor sad, the voice is strange, but somehow profound.

I do not pretend to understand, but it is well worth a few moments' chill to stop and listen.

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Forest Lake Times
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Forest Lake, MN 55025
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