On the last day of 2017, I flew to Detroit to visit an old friend. We hit the open road, just like back in our college days, driving without a plan, or a care in the world. Three hours later, we found ourselves in a small town in North Michigan, surrounded by nothing but snow that was deep enough to swallow our ankles whole.

Tian and I wound up renting two snowmobiles and tearing around town for hours, stopping only to grab some hot soup du jour at a local diner. The food wasn't great, but in a climate like that, all that mattered was to stuff anything that's high in calories and temperature into your body, so you can survive.

As night fell, we made our way to the Days Inn by the Lake Cadillac. Completely exhausted, I was ready to collapse into bed and bid farewell to the day (and the year).

But Tian had a different idea. He proposed this hare-brained scheme of traversing this nearby frozen lake that we saw people walking on earlier that day and reaching the center as the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve.

I was tentative at first.

However, the prospect of making an audacious experience, or just doing anything other than lazing in bed on the final night of the year, was too enticing to resist.

We slipped on our ski masks and trudged through the frigid air, the bitter cold seeping deep into our bones. It was only less than an hour till midnight, and the temperature had dropped to a teeth-chattering negative 13 Celsius.

The small town lay silent and still, frozen in time like a forgotten relic. The only sounds were the mournful howling of the winds and our own labored breaths, punctuating the eerie quiet of the night. It felt like a scene rendered alive from a Cormac McCarthy novel, desolate and unforgiving.

The darkness enveloped me, only the dim streetlights barely illuminating the edges of the massive body of ice that lay ahead - a living, breathing entity, a foreboding presence that dared us to approach.

As my feet gingerly landed on the frozen surface of Lake Cadillac, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of exhilaration that only comes from the thrill of walking on ice. The crunch of the snow under my soles and the peculiar texture of the ice beneath transported me to a place where all that mattered was the present moment.

Tian and I embarked on our journey, venturing forth into the unknown depths of this vast expanse of over a thousand acres. We had no idea where the center lay, or whether we would ever find it. But we pressed on, walking as fast as we could and conjuring up ways to commemorate the impending arrival of the new year.

As we turned our heads back over and over again, we found the lakeshore gradually faded away, and with it, the entire feeling of civilization. It was just the two of us, alone in the vastness of the frozen lake.

We were truly free… until the second that my ears caught the faintest sound of a crack.

In a split second, my feet were already an inch into the cold water.

My body was frozen, yet my mind was racing, like a deer caught in the headlights.

The world around me started to wobble, and for a moment, I couldn't tell if it was the unsteady ice beneath me or the fear of the unknown that was causing my mind to play tricks on me.

"Fuck!" I tried to scream out to Tian, to warn him of the danger we were in, but my voice came out barely more than a whisper - every instinct in my body was telling me not to move, even the muscles around my mouth, as if the slightest twitch could send me plummeting through the thin ice beneath my feet.

But we had to act, and fast.

I quickly pivoted on my heels and tiptoed towards him, eyes cast down, knowing that a tiny shift in my weight could mean the difference between life and death. I attempted to explain what I had just witnessed to Tian, who had been trailing a dozen feet behind me, now standing still and looking utterly befuddled.

"The ice here…” I said while exhaling in a rush, “It's getting too thin and it's starting to break."