When Ice-Tilt Devours

On witnessing when that is all we can do.

Sometimes, all we can do is not turn away. To witness the horror that we know awaits.

I had never heard a frozen lake sing. Throughout the day, deep booms and rolling rumbles had drawn me to the window where I searched for a cause. But now, I stood on the edge of the icy blue wonder, phone in hand to record not only the booms and rumbles but the squeaks and soprano trills that could be heard at this close proximity. Panning across the lake I noticed a lone ice-skater on the other side, carving graceful figure eights and lopsided circles. At the edge, on my side, the ice displayed various shades of blue where fissures created shelves from the frequent melts and refreezes of that particular winter’s cycle. I thought it was beautiful but worrisome.

Then, a bone-shaking boom and creeeeaaaak, pitch rising as the extended sound slid through my fear. Immediately I turned to the skater, terrified that I would see them flailing, grasping at tilting ice, an emergency for which I was unprepared to resolve. I would have tried to help but knew in the moment that they were too far away. That other help was even more distant. That I would be too late, should the need have arisen.

The moment has haunted me. What would I have done? What could I have done?

The ice-skater was fine—no ice-maw opened on that day. But now, there are daily echoes of that imagined ice-tilt—real in these cases—of ice devouring people unobtrusively living their lives, and observers feeling as if there is nothing they can do, no way to help.

I would have awkwardly scrambled across the frozen waterscape. I would have called out for help. But mostly, in truth, I would simply have been a witness to the devastating outcome awaiting the individual. I could not have turned away, for somebody must witness. Somebody must tell the tale, to bring the news to the individual’s loved ones and warn others. To make it right, whatever that means, in the end.

Sometimes, witnessing is all we can offer in the moment. It will never be enough. But it is something.