As we now enter the depths of another winter, there is one sound of the cold season that I recalls from my youth that I am quite certain that I will never hear again

There are many sounds of nature that are very distinctive … the howls of wolves, the crack of lightning, the calls of loons and screech owls, and the cries of hawks and eagles from high overhead..

Add to these the cracking of clear ice as it expands in very cold weather.

The only times I can distinctly recall hearing this sound was from when my father, Christian, took me and my older sister, Ruth, ice skating at the head of Presque Isle Bay west of Erie.

Since I am now a nonagenarian, this goes back a few years.

As a youthful skater, I found the sharp sounds and the resulting crystalline cracks that appeared in the clear ice to be disconcerting … but no, they weren’t caused by one’s passage over the ice, but just came from the ice’s expansion in clear weather. (Proof of this is that ice cubes float in water.)

Ice conditions back then also made ice boating possible, and I recall how they used to reach terrific speeds as they careened across the bay’s smooth ice.

I haven’t frequented my hometown of Erie for a good number of years now, but I seriously doubt that there have been any winters when the ice formed in such a fashion as to produce the intriguing sound that I recall so well, or allow much, if any, iceboating.

What is obviously required to produce the retorts of expanding ice is a good spell of very cold but calm weather hovering over clear water.

Except for the clear water aspect, global warming prevents such conditions, and of course climate change has been a hallmark of our environment for many, many years now, with each year being cited as the hottest on record, or one of the hottest.

It has been decades since there has been any ice skating on the lakes in Mill Creek Park near our Youngstown home

As proof of how global warming is so upon us, conditions on Lake Erie itself are certainly a far cry from what I recall as a youth.

As a family trio, we would often cut up and split driftwood during the winter on a large side lot next to our cottage, (“Valhalla”) on the beach west of Erie for use in the structure’s fireplace and for summer beach bonfires.

Because of waves hitting the beach in freezing weather’ large ice dunes would form, beyond which there would be ice out in the lakes as far as one could see. These conditions would exist as early as Christmas, as I recall.

One year, a large patch of clear ice formed well out in the lake off our cottage, and the three of us walked out to it to skate.

Although our trek might not have been too wise too wise then, today would not only be suicidal, but impossible.

Though my father kept up the accounting ledgers at kitchenware maker Griswold for 44 years, he doubled as an outdoorsman and he spent his brief vacations from Griswold either fishing in the lakes north of Toronto or hunting large and small game in the Keystone State.

His pursuit of outdoor activities was perhaps an antidote for his tedious occupation.

(He was one of eight owners of a hunting camp in Potter County who agreed that the “last man standing” would inherit the place, “Camp Rattlesnake.” Only one outlived my father.)

The smooth ice conditions I recall on the bay at Erie were always short-lived, however, as changing weather conditions would melt the ice, and when it refroze it would be much rougher.

But the days of clear ice on the bay fractured by crystalline cracks are now long gone I’m sure … unless efforts to reverse global warming succeed. (A very unlikely prospect.)

Another recollection I have related to the severity of past winters is based on the winter of 1963-64 which I spent in Sandusky, Ohio.

It was said that there was ice three feet thick on Sandusky Bay, and “windrows” of ice 13 feet high out on the lake. Ice fishing out on the lake was very popular that winter.

How much ice has there been off Sandusky in recent past winters, and how much will there be this winter? Not very much, I dare say.

And how much ice fishing has there been on the floes off Sandusky in recent winters, and how much will there be this winter? Again, not much, I’m quite sure.

Robert Stanger has lived seasonally for over 40 years along the Allegheny River and has the stories to tell about it.