Anglers take part in "Freezing Man" festivities on Lake Hallie.

Anglers take part in "Freezing Man" festivities on Lake Hallie.

The Black Rock Desert in Nevada hosts Burning Man every summer on what used to be an ancient lakebed. Anyone who’s been there will tell you it’s not a “festival” but a temporary metropolis, Black Rock City, created every year by “Burners” who come to assemble giant art installations or to appreciate them, and, of course, to party and burn stuff.

Here on Lake Hallie, it seems like we host “Freezing Man” each time a group of anglers comes out to ice fish. At least that’s what my new neighbor, Ken Smith, calls it. He recently showed me a photo he took from his front porch of five guys huddled on the back side of their pop-up ice shelter. Ken and his wife Kim Ferguson are in the midst of their second winter on Lake Hallie. They notice things us old timers no longer do. I love Ken’s concept of Freezing Man.

Just like at Burning Man, a temporary village materializes on Lake Hallie. Ours involves dudes in Pac boots and Carhartt gear on four-wheelers and snow machines surrounded by Eskimo-brand shelters that are a bit like grown-up pup tents.

My husband says each time he watches someone set one up it looks like a cat thrashing around inside a gunny sack. One afternoon Bruce and I watch a guy move his to another spot. Rather than pulling it on the ice, he simply lifts the nylon shelter a few inches off the ground while standing inside. All we can see is a levitating tent with boots.

Anglers adhere to the Burning Man mantra “leave no trace,” though I’ve noticed the occasional too-small blue gills left on the ice. They attract bickering eagles, which bring neighbors like me to our windows with binoculars.

Burning Man is held in an extreme environment, just like Lake Hallie in winter.

There are other similarities. Vendor free? Check. Everyone’s expected to participate? Check. Balancing cooperation, self-reliance, individual expression and creative collaboration in a community? All checks.

Burning Man’s experiment in “temporary community” goes back to the San Francisco Bay area, 1991, when a small group set fire to a wooden structure in the shape of a man. Freezing men on Lake Hallie go back to the 1840s when Blue Mills loggers might have gathered around a small fire, more for utility than an artist’s statement.

Burning Man attracts upwards of 40,000 participants at $400 a pop. I had to do the math twice. A cool $16 million. The Lake Hallie Sportsman’s Club annual ice fishing contest the first Saturday in February brings out maybe a hundred, if you include the kids and dogs. You buy a dollar raffle ticket to enter or 6 tickets for $5.

Burning Man attendees must bring along all supplies including food, water and tools. If you forget something vital, your best bet is to make friends with your neighbors. On ice fishing contest Saturdays this is exactly the culture on Lake Hallie. Anglers share food, drinks, lures and stories.

In the broadest sense Freezing Man takes place on lakes every weekend, January to early March, all across the upper Midwest when bars sponsor outdoor contests on ice: from Bar Flyz 72nd annual Ice Fisheree in Prairie du Chien to the first annual Max’s Ice Fishing Contest on Long Lake. Tricked out four-wheel racers — known as SxS, short for side-by-side — could become the next Iceman 500 Champion on Balsam Lake. Rose’s Bay Resort in Weyerhaeuser offers its 10th annual Bowling on Ice.

Today and tomorrow, Wabasha sponsors its 29th annual Grumpy Old Men Festival, where you can fish, tip back a few around a bonfire on ice, or jump through a hole cut in the Mississippi. Bruce and I agree: this last event would make anyone grumpy.

The Brainerd Jaycees sponsor their Americas Ice Fishing Tournament, which allows you to fish wherever you want in the U.S. one Saturday in January as long as you share a video of yourself and your catch via the FishDonkey app. Pre-pandemic “virtual ice fishing” would seem like a joke, but a $50 entry fee enters you to win a $25,000 cash prize for snagging the biggest walleye, northern, crappie, perch or sunfish.

Closer to home we’ve got the annual Jig’s Up Blugold Contest on Lake Wissota and the Sportsman’s Club contest on Lake Hallie, which didn’t happen last year because of the pandemic — the first time in 42 years.

The Earth’s increasing temperature means ice is changing on Lake Hallie and on other northern hemisphere lakes. This affects wildlife habitat and fish reproduction not to mention the length of the ice fishing season. As a kid I remember ice skating on Lake Hallie around my BFF’s birthday, December 8. Now some risk-taking anglers might be out by mid-December, but I don’t set foot on the lake until at least Christmas, when I see my neighbor Larry Luedtke with his auger.

In that regard, Larry is the grand poobah of Lake Hallie’s Freezing Man. He’s been visiting this lake since 1960 when he started dating Pat Smetana, who’d become his wife. Her dad Jerry built the family cabin on Lake Hallie when his plan to purchase a lot on the Chippewa River fell through. After Jerry died, Pat and Larry retired here from West Bend in 1996. Five years later he lost his beloved Pat. Larry knows the cabin’s next owners: his daughter and grandsons love coming here, no matter the season.

This year it’s minus-1 degree when the first vehicles arrive for the ice fishing contest on Lake Hallie, a tradition started in 1980. No one yet knows that the winning northern pike will be a whopping 13.6 pounds — over five pounds heavier than the runner up. Or that below-zero wind chills will keep even a diehard like me from walking the lake to talk to anglers.

By 7 a.m. I hear the familiar whir of an ice auger, though the competition technically doesn’t start for another five hours. Across the lake, neighbor Kim is making a crowd-sized batch of chocolate chip cookies. She’ll package them in Ziplocs to give away at the registration tent. From our toasty kitchen, Bruce and I watch it go up and then see the port-o-potty unloaded from a truck bed. Bruce poses the question of the day: Just how cold is that toilet seat?

See is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in Brevity, Salon Magazine, The Wisconsin Academy Review, The Southwest Review, HipMama, Inside HigherEd and many other magazines, journals and anthologies. She wrote the blog “Our Long Goodbye: One Family’s Experiences with Alzheimer’s” which has been read in more than 100 countries, and she is a frequent contributor to “Wisconsin Life” on Wisconsin Public Radio. She lives in Lake Hallie with her husband, writer Bruce Taylor. Her essay collection, “Here on Lake Hallie: In Praise of Barflies, Fix-it Guys, and Other Folks in Our Hometown,” is forthcoming in 2022 from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

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