Winter sinks its dirty thumbs into November and I am already waiting for the ice to form. It begins in the puddles, coalescing into spider webs that crunch under my shoes, then creeps up the buildings to hang from the eaves. Next month it will slip into the river, insidious, choking the current where it flows slow between the bridges downtown, and by the new year the surface will be in stasis, a geometry of ice defined by cracks and rivulets, pocked with trash from the sidewalks. Lake Michigan makes a more grudging concession. Seagulls perch briefly on first chunks of ice but are quickly shooed away as the lake reclaims her own, but they accumulate, and the lake cannot keep up; she abandons her shoreline and withdraws, splashing angry waves towards the bay. In February the ice will be solid, matching the water with the dull grey air, but undulating almost imperceptibly, the scales of a dragon sleeping just below.
I love to watch the stillness build, the way the obscenity of summer deflates, and the gradual trend to inertia takes hold. But it is the sounds that get into my skin: there is nothing like the language of the ice, its ghostly susurration. I walk along the river, along the lakefront, and I feel like a voyeur, like I'm listening to the water confide secrets to a friend. The words wash over me, unintelligble; the puddles crunch under my feet like radio static.