Jon Jackson

Icing Over It was so cold today, our shadows froze to death atop the snow. They blew against the boathouse, and shattered like dust atop the snowdrifts. Great plumes of steam rise off the lake like souls swimming toward Orion in an eerie rapture of the solstice. The hunting moons have flown, dark arctic birds have followed. The afternoon ice creeps across the lake. Nearby, a farmer disks his sugar beet field, pacing the freeze with his tractor: slow, steady circuits draw dark, wide lines on the ground while the lake blurs, marvelous and milky like a demon cataract. Inside, I am reading of Lewis and Clark, of their Fort Clatsop winter - to them Oregon was nothing but a hell of boiled elk and boiled wapeto, of Indians wise to the tricks of white men. Boxed in spruce battlements, they made their salt and maps, waited for signs of spring. Two chapters later, it is the spring of 1806. Lewis has started east. As night falls along the lakeshore, the first air bubbles have risen, trapped by the nascent pane of ice - there they will wait, like the frogs buried in the silt and mud below, wondering where the birds have gone.

Jon Jackson is a scientist, teacher, and writer whose work has been published  in journals ranging from the Anatomical Record to the Journal of Biological Chemistry. His creative writings have appeared in an assortment of magazines, journals, and newspapers around the country. He previously taught at the University of North Dakota and Vanderbilt University, and currently teaches and resides in the San Francisco Bay area.