ABSTRACT
A seasonal nomadic phenomenon occurs on Minnesota lakes each year, and that is the brief appearance and evanescence of ice fishing communities. During the three coldest winter months every year an ephemeral frozen landscape gives rise to innumerable temporary communities of ice fishing houses and their inhabitants. Like a circus coming to town – hoisting huge tents, convening collapsible cages, and establishing temporary territory – these portable fishing villages conjure up an almost magical allure brought about by such wholesale transformation. Individual ice houses are designed and built as transportable structures. Fishermen equipped with skills evolved over many childhood winters build and place their ice houses without the help of designers, urban planners, or architects. Each winter when lakes freeze to a suitable thickness, these nomadic men and women transport their fishing houses onto the ice. Sites are chosen, houses skidded into place, and snow pushed around perimeters and watered to freeze into both footing and purchase. As warm weather approaches and the ice darkens, houses are broken loose from their frozen moorings and trailered off the ice until the following year. Because of the ephemeral nature of the landscape, the houses are necessarily temporary; they cannot persist year round. By springtime, no discernible evidence of these winter communities remains.
