What do you do with hot charcoal from a grill after cooking burgers to eat while you skate and walk around on a frozen lake on a full moon night? All of us on Pleasant Lake tonight agreed we shouldn’t dump the charcoal in one place on the ice, where it would melt through in spring and make a mess on the lake bottom. What if we spread it out across the ice? We scooped a few coals from the grill onto the ice, and Peter swept them away with his hockey stick. Each chunk flared up into a small firework of flames, breaking into a spray of light in the wind, sparkles scattering across our line of vision. What a great show! Over and over, we tipped a few more chunks of charcoal on the ice, and Peter sent them on a flaring journey into the muted night. Then the grill was empty, the orange light of the coals flickering out fast in the wind and cold, the lake shining silver in the moon.
Grace Mattern 