It's one of those raw mid-winter nights, when the crystalline snow crunches under your boots like brittle eggshells, strewn on an arctic beach. Out over the Bay of Quinte the ice slowly and painfully buckles. A crackling musket shot parts the air and echoes back out across the wind swept bay.

South out over The County, a million stars sparkle in the clear black sky-as if someone took a shotgun and blasted it full of ice crystals. You see the twin stars of Gemini; Orion's Belt, and the Pleiades. Hanging in the eastern sky down towards the narrows, the night flare of Jupiter smolders and burns.

A sharp cold wind blows across the Bay, kicking up wisps of snow, out on the frozen water. In places the wind has blown open patches and the ice is so clear you imagine you can see through to where sluggish Walleye glide slowly through the torpid water.

From Meyers Pier, you see the lights of houses stretched along the other shore like a necklace of frozen candles. A dog barks out there and the sound travels to you through the crisp cool night, as if the frozen molecules of air that should have slowed it down have grown placid and subdued in their vigilance.

You smell the wood smoke that drifts up from the little ice huts that huddle in isolated clusters of three or four, all across the bay. The door of one hut springs open and a square of lamplight falls out onto the white snow.

Two men stand in shirtsleeves smoking and looking up into the heavens. A mist of warm hazy air leaks out into the night, until a voice from inside yells at them to close the damn door and the square of light snaps back in.

The two men stand there quietly for awhile, the red glow from their cigarettes dancing in the dark. From somewhere a door slams, a cuss, laughter, feet crunching across the snow. The men finish their smokes and flick their still glowing tips off into the night, landing to sizzle and die on frozen ice.

You follow the smokers back into the hut, and are acknowledged by friends who greet you with jocular insults, meant to tell you they like you enough to risk your anger. You're offered a beer and a place by the ice hole to lower your line and join the circle.

As the heat from the wood stove warms your fingers and toes, you begin to peal back the layers of clothing, you walked across the ice bundled in. The fish haven't been biting much so you haven't missed a lot.

"Not like last year," says one guy. There's general agreement to the comment. "You got that right." Says another. "Remember that one I caught just the day before we hauled the shack back in?" "Nearly pulled you down the hole!" says another laughing.

You bask with them, in the memory of collective fishing experiences. The time it snowed so hard everyone spent the night and then had to cut a hole in the roof in the morning to get out.

"And that young kid! What was his name? Billy! Right! He closed the damper and smoked us all out." They laugh now but at the time they'd glowered at the kid, till he said he was sorry. Stupid city kid- someone's nephew brought along, to give him a taste of small town life. He'd been sheepish and apologetic and the guys couldn't stay angry long.

There's a toast to missing friends, bottles clinking together. Old Mack passed on in the fall. Looked good though laid out, kids and wife crying. This gets everyone quiet and thinking for a minute-remembering.

Outside the wind catches a piece of newspaper and whips it across the ice, flattening it against the side of the hut where it snaps and flutters in the breeze. You might notice, if you step out for air, that the temperature has risen a few degrees.

Just a bit of a warm spell-maybe snow coming in the morning. Certainly nothing that indicates spring. No, surely that's more than two months away. But here at mid winter, once again there's a sense of looking forward to warmer weather. For a moment or two allowing yourself to remember summer.

Warm nights when you walked straight out of the house in shorts and tee shirt not thinking even to take a sweater. Birds singing in the trees. Plants growing right up out of the ground. Backyard barbecues. Boat rides on this very same bay, warm breeze in your face, gentle mist coming up over the bow and settling in your hair.

You might think to yourself-it won't be long now till summer. We'll all look back in the spring and see that we made it through another winter. Survived another one. Maybe even enjoyed it just a little bit.