Floating away on an ice slab looked easy when Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer did it in the classic cartoon.
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Bill Matson is here to say that in real life, things are not always so smooth.
Matson, 24, can be considered something of an authority on the subject because on Saturday, he, too, floated away on a slab of ice. While the story has a happy ending, the factory worker from Zion feels lucky to be around to relate his adventure of pitching about Lake Michigan on an oversized ice cube.
Here’s how it happened: After biking through Illinois Beach State Park with a neighbor, Matson decided to take a stroll on the ice some 20 feet beyond the shore. Just then a big wave rolled in, breaking the ice free and throwing Matson onto his back.
When he looked up, he saw the shore floating away.
“Uh-oh,” he thought. “I’m in trouble.”
That he was.
While his buddy went for help, Matson struggled to stay on the slippery floe, which was pitching wildly in the waves, drifting farther from shore, and gradually disintegrating.
Right away he plunged his pocketknife into the ice. Then, wet and cold, he clung to the knife handle.
What was he thinking about?
“Death,” he said, as he recalled the incident Monday. “I knew if I fell in I would die.”
After about 20 minutes, help arrived.
Rescuers from the Waukegan Fire Department, the Bonnie Brook Fire Protection District, the Illinois Conservation Police and the Coast Guard arrived.
So did onlookers, attracted to the park by mild weather-and the commotion. “It was really pretty embarrassing,” he said.
His parents heard about the adventure on television. “So you were on an iceberg, huh?” his father asked.
On Monday, Matson, a materials handler at A. L. Hansen Manufacturing Co. in Waukegan, decided to take the day off to recover. When he called to say he wouldn’t be coming in, the person on the other end of the line responded, “Hey, Mr. Iceberg!”