Relative Something

Despite what the two words, “ice” and “out,” have come to mean in 2026 with respect to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, used together, these words have long had a different connotation in places where winter resembles Arctic conditions that last for many months.

For many lake communities, the question of when a lake will become ice-free has launched a time-honored tradition of friendly wagers on predicting the exact date. Thus, I have decided to open a contest for you, my dear readers, to guess the exact date of ice-out on Paddock Lake in 2026.

This photo shows the ice’s condition as of yesterday morning. It was frozen solid. Mia was already making close observations toward settling on her best guess. You will have to rely on what you can deduce from the image.

Here are the Contest Rules, as determined by a committee consisting entirely of unbiased representatives of Wintervale Ranch. In other words, me:

1. Your guess must be submitted in whatever way works best for you and your level of connection with blogger, *this* John W. Hays. That may include an email, a text, a comment on today’s post, or telepathy, if you think I can be trusted to receive it. Don’t count on that.
2. Comments on this post should include your initials, nickname, or some unique identifier of your choosing since unfamiliar commenters show up to me as “anonymous.”
3. To be as fair as possible (and as a reward to contestants who are regular daily readers), your guess should arrive to me before the end of the day today, March 3rd. If you only miss by a small amount of time, go ahead and guess anyway. The judge may allow it in the case that nobody else has chosen to participate.
4. In the event of a duplicate date being guessed, the first one to pick said date will be granted an advantage. However, there remains the possibility that I might split the prize if the situation seems warranted.
5. Sour grapes are considered bad form, so if the horses choose to mess with the lake before ice out is declared by the judge, no complaints will be tolerated. Plus, such action by the paddock dwellers could possibly help some guesses. Did you consider that?
6. Any rules that have been overlooked will be left to the whims of Mother Nature to ignore as she sees fit.

In the event that anyone actually bothers to guess, and if a guess of the exact date is successfully submitted, this contest is prepared to offer the following as a prize:

The winner will be awarded a custom word painting of vague length that may loosely resemble some manner of prose frequently referred to as a poem, ode, or rambling free verse creative writing that will somewhere within, somehow contain four words submitted by the person who guessed the correct date.

If a tie is deemed permissible, each person will be submitting two words to be combined in the victory verse composition.

The following context is being provided for consideration while deciding on your guess:

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