The Bullhead Queen: A Year on Pioneer Lake

Ever Living Fire

Ever Living Fire 80 T he moon waxed full the second week in April. The night was illuminated with such brilliance that at times I could not sleep and, instead, wandered the half-lit house, looking out over a yard drenched in moonlight . This was the first full moon after the vernal equinox, the celestial event that signaled the start of a new year for the ancient Hebrews. I like the idea of beginning a new year with the coming of spring. Beginnings are abundant in March and April, much more so than in January. After a natural pause at the end of winter, leaves begin to form on trees, migratory birds arrive to start their breeding season, and other animals come out of hibernation to resume their lives. This first full moon after the vernal equinox marks the beginning of the Hebrew month of Nisan and the start of the Jewish Passover, a celebration of freedom from the bonds of slavery. Passover begins at sundown, just as the full moon is rising. On Monday in the second week in April, I watched it ascend, round and creamy over the bare, colorless soybean field to our east. It was a vision of splendor in a spring sky still rosy with the setting sun. Days quickly lengthen around the vernal equinox. By April, there is enough light in the evening for a walk around the lake after supper, or for some scratching in the garden. Northerners become deliriously happy with the lengthening days. The apparent death of nature, caused by the short days and weakened sun, now appears as an illusion. Life has rebounded robustly. We have renewed reason to anticipate a green world and the sweetness of summer. In resonance with this natural heartbeat, the Passover also celebrates a deliverance from death. In the Exodus, the central, defining event of Judaism, the angel of death recognizes the blood of sacrifice on the door frame of each Jewish house and passes over it, sparing the first-born son of each family. When I was a child and heard this story in Sunday school, the angel of death assumed in my mind’s eye a dark and fearsome form. I imagined it as a shadowy figure, perhaps with a staff, or a wand, like the dark fairy in Sleeping Beauty. It cast its shade on each door, bestowing death on some families and life on others. But as an adult, I find it difficult to recognize the angel of death in its various forms. I often cannot discern whether it stands in shadow or moonlight. The angel of death paused over Pioneer Lake this spring. The very day of the Passover moon the ice that had capped the lake since November broke up, revealing silent mayhem . Pale, bloated bodies of dead fish floated belly up on its surface. The lake had suffered a phenomenon known to limnologists as winterkill. At the shore, I gazed at a dead bass, its eyes opaque, its sheen vanished. Nearby, a bleached body of a leopard frog hung motionless and upright in the water, gently swaying with the ripples. Another lay on the mucky bottom. Both were close to where I had emptied a bucket of live, squirmy frogs in November after rescuing them from where they had fallen into a window well of the house. A piscine odor of rot permeated the chilly air. Usually, the day the ice goes out is a day of celebration. I feel ecstatic looking at the newly released water, sparkling Ever Living Fire 81 in the sunlight. Suddenly, the world looks bluer and more luminous, as the lake’s surface reflects the light and color of the sky. But this year, the ice retreated slowly, and while I took in the dead bodies and the stench, most of the lake remained under the pall of gray, decaying ice. It was both unsettling and fascinating. A lake experiences winterkill when the organisms living under its ice use up most of the oxygen dissolved in its waters. Once a lake freezes in the fall, oxygen from the atmosphere cannot replenish the supply in the lake. The fish, frogs, turtles, bacteria, and other life forms that overwinter in the lake have a finite amount to last until spring. Pioneer has several features that make it a prime candidate to deplete its oxygen. Its shallow basin holds relatively little water, and so...