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Okay, so in one of my favorite books of ever, American gods, the magical O'Neill

Gaiman takes us to a place where every year, in the winter, after the temperature dropped

below zero, the lake freezes into an ice sheet.

And the locals, they drag a junkyard car, haul it to the middle of the lake, and then they raise

money for a local charity. By raffling off tickets, each ticket detailing a precise time,

but in the spring, that car is going to break the ice and sink beneath the water.

Whoever calls it closest gets the big prize.

Now, I'm from Michigan, and this is a real thing in places I grew up.

It's how the PTA raises money for the high school basketball uniforms

Or maybe a new roof for the firehouse

In fact, people have been known to make sure

They're holding the winning ticket

Was a stick to a well-placed dynamite

So that the car sinks when it's supposed to

But this past year my old stomping grounds,

they couldn't have the contest.

No raffle for after-school programs, no sticks of dynamite, because for the first time

in living memory, the lake didn't freeze over.

And being from this place, it's hard to adequately express the surprise, the shock, our connection to the cold.

We revel in it. We fetishize it. We play and work and roll and sleep and run and fishing it.

This is not just the thing to reckon with out there.

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