There are some things I just don’t get.

This is not the same as saying there are things I don’t enjoy.  I can think of a lot of activities I don’t personally enjoy but can imagine others enjoying. 

Rock climbing, for example.  This is my niece’s latest passion and I am informed she's pretty good at it.  One look at my manicured fingernails and oversized derriere will tell you that I have no intention of breaking the former in order to haul the latter up a sheer face of granite.  But I can imagine that it would be a satisfying experience for those with more calluses and less poundage. 

Hunting is another thing I can sort of understand.  I mean real hunting in a real wilderness as a solitary pursuit, not a bunch of drunks blasting away at anything that moves while trying not to drop their beers (as some of my deer-hunting friends have described their expeditions).  Personally, when I see a deer in the woods, I want to pet it, not kill it.  But I’m not sentimental--I’ve eaten venison, enjoyed it, and I’m reasonably sure the deer that donated my steak did not commit suicide.   I can imagine getting satisfaction out of obtaining my food (as long as someone else guts and skins it) but you can be reasonably sure you’ll never run into me creeping through the woods with a rifle, dressed in camouflage.  BTW, did you know deer are colorblind?  Brown and green camo might as well be orange and purple for all the difference it makes to the deer. 

Then there’s fishing.  I really don’t like fishing at all, although I like everything about the fishing experience—the water, the peace—other than the part where you actually attempt to catch fish.  So I can see how some people would like fishing.

But ice fishing I just don’t get.   And I have ample opportunity to watch people doing it, right from my window.  I’m not talking in semi-luxurious ice-fishing shelters.  There was one guy out on the lake last week crouched in something that looked like a doorless gym locker.  Ooo-eee, that looks like big fun, doesn’t it?

We had above-freezing temperatures and rain and wind a couple of days ago, and the lake ice started to break up.  It wasn’t that thick to begin with and it didn’t take much to make it come apart.  And yet there were suicidal ice fishermen out there in the wet wind, precariously close to open water, the ice literally dissolving all around them.  We watched breathlessly, certain someone would fall through at any time.  We saw a couple of people come close, scrambling to get away from forming cracks, but none of them abandoned their equipment or their “tip ups.” 

December 23 on Crystal Lake.  Yes, that's open water 15 feet from the fishermen.  Yikes!

Seriously, how badly must these poor bastards want to fish?

I just don’t get it.