This reminded me of a similar thing from my childhood. I grew up in a very traditional Indigenous family. My parents were born in the wilderness so I grew up doing a lot of very traditional things like hunting, trapping and fishing. One of my earliest farthest memories is being out on the ice gill net fishing with my parents. I must have been about seven eight years old. You have to set out an area on a river and then chip out a series of holes to literally ‘sew’ a net under the ice attached to a long pole guiding the pole past the holes you made. I can remember looking at those holes in the ice and wondering … if I fall in, I won’t be able to get back through the hole … I would end up stuck under the ice until I died. The holes were small … but I was small too and I knew I could easily fit through the hole … it was a weird fascination between I don’t want to drown in an ice hole … and I wonder what it’s like under the ice hole. It completely freaked me out and became an embedded permanent memory for me forever after.
It’s weird thinking about dangerous things when you’re a kid … you know the danger, you know it might even be deadly but you’re curious to find out what it would mean or what it would feel like … it’s amazing any of us survive through childhood.
The idea of falling in an ice hole also freaked me out because of the movie Never Cry Wolf, which seems to have dropped down the memory hole. I liked it a lot when I was a kid.
My parents loved that film because they identified with it a lot … I know, I know … there are a lot of criticisms around Farley Mowat and what he may or may not have known or embellished about the writing he created. I loved Farley because he was a complete nut … but my kind of lovable weird intelligent nut. In the movie, the images and ideas of living out in the wilderness was a lot of fun to watch … and yes that scene under the ice was terrifying for me as a kid.
Thanks for awakening long forgotten fears and anxieties … may you drown in your bathtub … and me in my river.
I actually know nothing about Farley Mowat. I barely remember the film apart from the scene he falls through the ice since it terrified me so much. I just know I watched the film multiple times when we had it on VHS when I was a kid.
This reminded me of a similar thing from my childhood. I grew up in a very traditional Indigenous family. My parents were born in the wilderness so I grew up doing a lot of very traditional things like hunting, trapping and fishing. One of my earliest farthest memories is being out on the ice gill net fishing with my parents. I must have been about seven eight years old. You have to set out an area on a river and then chip out a series of holes to literally ‘sew’ a net under the ice attached to a long pole guiding the pole past the holes you made. I can remember looking at those holes in the ice and wondering … if I fall in, I won’t be able to get back through the hole … I would end up stuck under the ice until I died. The holes were small … but I was small too and I knew I could easily fit through the hole … it was a weird fascination between I don’t want to drown in an ice hole … and I wonder what it’s like under the ice hole. It completely freaked me out and became an embedded permanent memory for me forever after.
It’s weird thinking about dangerous things when you’re a kid … you know the danger, you know it might even be deadly but you’re curious to find out what it would mean or what it would feel like … it’s amazing any of us survive through childhood.
The idea of falling in an ice hole also freaked me out because of the movie Never Cry Wolf, which seems to have dropped down the memory hole. I liked it a lot when I was a kid.
My parents loved that film because they identified with it a lot … I know, I know … there are a lot of criticisms around Farley Mowat and what he may or may not have known or embellished about the writing he created. I loved Farley because he was a complete nut … but my kind of lovable weird intelligent nut. In the movie, the images and ideas of living out in the wilderness was a lot of fun to watch … and yes that scene under the ice was terrifying for me as a kid.
Thanks for awakening long forgotten fears and anxieties … may you drown in your bathtub … and me in my river.
Haha, you’re welcome.
I actually know nothing about Farley Mowat. I barely remember the film apart from the scene he falls through the ice since it terrified me so much. I just know I watched the film multiple times when we had it on VHS when I was a kid.