Watercolor illustration by Michael Burpoe (Provided)

“Born of cold and winter air

And mountain rain combining

This icy force both foul and fair

Has a frozen heart worth mining

So cut through the heart, cold and clear

Strike for love and strike for fear

See the beauty, sharp and sheer

Split the ice apart

And break the frozen heart”

— Frozen Heart, Frozen

Volunteering for the first time at the construction of the Ice Palace is intimidating. So many foreign sounds, sights and tools, one might not know how to even start. Frozen blocks of ice get passed from vice to Bobcat to wall worker as nimbly as one might pass a guac-ladened chip. A symphony of motion and heavy machinery, it’s easy to forget the unrelenting fact that those blocks are… massively heavy.

And gosh do I love working on that wall. As one of the younger members of the Ice Palace Workers 101 (IPW-101) who build the Ice Palace in Saranac Lake, I most enjoy the spectacle roles, like ice sawing and laying blocks along the top of the wall. The strange comradery of being 15 feet above ground, precariously perched on a frozen wall wielding such archaic tools as an ice shaver… it really brings out the best in you.

Needless to say, as is the case with most grand operations, there are many more roles that are less overt but just as important. Spudding, “pole-dancing” (shepherding the blocks down the ice channel with 15-foot poles), traffic directing, machinery driving, crane-operating, architecting and ice sculpting — these many roles are the instruments that create the unique symphony that is the construction of the annual Saranac Lake Ice Palace.

As with every volunteer effort, simply joining the construction at the palace can be the greatest hurdle of all. Again, volunteering for the first time at the Ice Palace is intimidating. “When does it happen? How would I know what to do? What if I’m afraid to get up on the wall? Is it safe?” These are but a fraction of the questions that I’ve been asked by my friends as I’ve stepped up my efforts to usher in the next generation of IPW-101 members in my group chats.

… And to those questions I say: About a week or so before Carnival starts. You won’t know what to do, but you’ll be taught by someone who does (except maybe driving the tractors and cranes). If you don’t wanna go up on the wall, don’t go up on the wall. It’s very safe, just be aware of your surroundings, and bring your own micro spikes if you wanna be extra safe about slipping.

But the real question that I don’t hear asked enough is … “Why? Why do you do this? Why should I do this?”

At times it does all feel a little improbable. A tradition over a hundred years old that would be nigh on impossible to start now-a-days, that relies on the donation of thousands of dollars of local machinery and hundreds of man hours, not to mention the soups provided free daily to workers … Why do we do it if it’s so hard?

To put forward my own thesis, I believe we do it, in part, because it is hard. Those blocks of ice don’t pop out of the lake like some low-budget Minecraft mod. It takes a 115-year-old circular saw on a sled to start the job, an overeager local fueled by coffee sawing by hand for a minute, and a team of giant chisels striking in unison to release them. Would it really be a palace fit for royalty if we just turned on some sprinklers and let mother nature play second fiddle?

Maybe it’s something that just needs to be experienced to really understand, and sometimes I just don’t quite have the words to explain the “Why.” Which is why sometimes I just shrug and tell them, “Well, you get a free sticker if you volunteer.”

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Michael Burpoe is a watercolor artist and lives in Saranac Lake. He is a member of the Adirondack Artists Guild and IPW-101.