Long Lake is beginning to wake up. The lake ice has been groaning something fierce for the last few days. This is the day that the sun shines directly on the equator and there’s almost exactly equal amounts of night and day. It was cold enough today that the water at land’s edge has refrozen. But the ice at the edge is just a thin clear crust. If something swam by you’d see it perfectly. I haven’t seen anything swim by though.

The branches that ice fishermen set in their holes to warn of thin ice are still standing up straight. And the surface of the ice shows snowmobile and ATV “scars.” Why that happens, I don’t know. But as the ice melts the paths habitually taken this winter show up clearly.

Scrawny looking deer have been visiting every evening. They drank at the water’s edge a few nights ago. Not tonight though.

We are anxious for ice out and dock in.