Cold water is scary. Really cold water with ice on top is extra scary. Once you’ve fallen through the ice, and the water has you in its grip, it quickly robs you of your ability to fight. In a few short minutes, it makes you clumsy and slow and sleepy and disorientated, until you can’t even try to save yourself. It’s a predator that makes you calmly accept your death. For as long as I could remember, one of my top fears—a break-out-in-a-cold-sweat-even-thinking-about-it fears—was getting trapped under the ice. The idea of pounding on an unbreakable frozen layer while not being able to breathe… That’s the stuff of nightmares. So why, exactly, was I standing on a frozen reservoir, just feet from a hole cut in the ice, preparing to jump into thirty-two-and-a-half-degree water? Sadly, I have a tendency to believe people when they say, “C’mon! This’ll be fun!” I’ve gotten suckered into countless chores (“Let’s all spring-clean the boarding stable. It’ll be fun! It won’t ...
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