So when they got to Chippewa, while the rest of the class went off to identify rabbit tracks in the snow, Walter and Kate slipped away. As they made their way down to the shoreline, Walter watched the snowflakes melt on Kate’s eyelashes under the brim of the red woollen hat that her mother had made to match her red woollen coat, although she hated wearing it because it made her ears itch. She was talking about Christmas, which was always the only thing on her mind from the first snowfall onward. That year, she was hoping for a bike, but was probably not going to get one, since the Babiak farm had lost three cows in the fall and her father needed some kind of expensive dental work. Still, she talked about careering down Candy Mountain and over a series of jumps. “Imagine,” she said, turning around to walk backwards in front of him. “It would be like flying.” Walter, who was only hoping for his father to not be drunk for Christmas, kept his head down as she talked, concentrating on the outline of the soles of his shoes biting into the snow cover.

When he raised his head to look at her again, suddenly all he saw was water: Lake Superior, rising up beyond the frozen crust built up on the edge of the sand, stretching towards the horizon, vast and bright with a delicate sheen of ice. Walter temporarily forgot how to breathe. For the rest of his life he would never forget the first time he saw the lake – with Kate standing in front of it in her red woollen hat, with the snow on her skin, the sparkle of the ice floes suspended around her head like a halo.

“What?” said Kate, turning away from him to skip off towards the shoreline, oblivious to the monumental significance of the moment.

“The lake,” Walter managed to squeak.

“Yeah, it’s a lot of water!”