… is a question of the form: “Can you find this story (that I barely remember) for me?”
We’ve even talked before about how hard this task is. Perhaps this is why people keep coming to librarians and asking these questions. They really want to find that story again, and they can’t figure out how to do it.
But we’ve also talked about some research methods for finding lost stories.
This week, the story is personal: Now *I* want to find a story, but I’m having trouble finding it. (Details below). Can you help out?
Naturally, I also want to know if this story could be true as well. Here are the details for the story SearchResearch Challenge for this week:
I remember reading a short story (that I believe was written sometime in the past few years) about a couple who are hiking across a frozen landscape in winter. One of them (I think it’s the man), falls through the ice as he’s crossing a frozen lake and disappears.
The woman thinks he’s fallen into the icy water and drowned, but when she goes to check, it turns out that he’s actually fallen into the space beneath the ice that has no water in it. He’s alive and well, walking around on the floor of the lake. That is, the lake is somehow empty, but the shell of the ice has remained, and he broke through that.
They stay for a while in this magical place beneath the lake ice that is somewhat warm and in some way has mysterious flashes of light.
That’s the story as I recall it. As they traverse the snowy landscape, they visit this remarkable place beneath the surface of the lake.
Really? Is such a thing even possible?
Challenges:
1. Can you find this short story for me? What’s the title? Who’s the author?
2. Can this empty space beneath the lake ice REALLY happen like this? (That is, is it true that the water of the lake can freeze over, then somehow the water can drain away, leaving this empty space?)
3. This empty-space-beneath-the-lake-ice must have a name–this is such a strange phenomena (if real) that is would be called something. What’s that term? (It’s probably not the sub-aquatic-post-freezing-space!)
Good luck with this. (I believe finding the story will be straightforward, but finding out if this sub-ice space is real will be a bit more tricky.)
Be sure to tell us HOW you find the answer. (IF it exists. Remember that stories are often mis-remembered, or the details of the story get confused over the passage of time.)
Search on!
