Lake Residents Check Out Express Isles Several Thompson Lake Islands Cut Loose In Storm, Sail Into Residents’ Yards

Everybody knew there was something strange about the Thompson Lake islands.

For one thing, they’re spongy. Really spongy.

“It’s like stepping onto a big mattress,” said lakeside homeowner Mark Johnson. “You can feel them move under your weight.”

And unlike the rest of the lake, the islands never rose up out of the water during droughts or shrank during high water.

It was almost as if … well … as if the islands were floating.

In fact, they are.

In high water and heavy winds Dec. 4, several of the peat islands - the largest covering four acres - apparently broke their tree-root moorings and drifted a quarter of a mile to the northeast end of the lake.

On Wednesday, high winds brought another island, this one covering about half an acre. Thompson Lake, five miles northeast of Harrison, is one of the so-called “chain lakes” east of Lake Coeur d’Alene.

“It was hell and high water,” said Evan Jones, an Eastside Highway District commissioner who lives on the lake. “High water, and a hell of a wind. That’s a lot of real estate to move.”

Accountant Wilma Schorzman, 71, wandered into the kitchen that morning to put on some coffee. She glanced out the window at the lake.

“And there it was,” she said. “I saw an island that used to be about halfway to Harrison.”

Incredulous, she washed her face, found her glasses, then looked out the window again.

“There’s 30-foot pine trees on it,” she said.

The islands had sailed in under cover of darkness, with their two dozen pine trees and five manmade goose nesting platforms intact. The islands lodged in the cove where Thompson Creek runs into the lake.

When the big island arrived, it broke Johnson’s dock and left his boat ramp landlocked, except for a small patch of water where three steel pilings held the island back.

“Before it was a terrific fishing spot,” said Johnson. “Now it’s a grassy meadow with trees growing on it.”

The phenomenon isn’t as bizarre as it sounds, according to officials at the Idaho Department of Lands.

The islands are made of a dense mash of sticks, bark and dried weeds. After a while, the clumps get thick enough to support moss, cattails, brush and trees.

Bathtub-size chunks of the islands lie strewn about Thompson Lake’s high-water mark.

“You get enough organic material in there and it’ll float,” said forest hydrologist Douglass Fitting.

“Most bogs are suspended like that.”

The islands will probably stay in their new home, said navigable waters specialist Jim Brady. That’s because the lake’s water level has dropped, and parts of the floating islands are likely now resting on the lake bottom.

“I don’t think there’s enough horsepower on this lake to move them,” Brady said Thursday, on a visit to the lake.

The islands moved once before, in May 1926, according to self-described old-timer Frank Thompson. The lake is named after his pioneer grandfather, William J. Thompson.

“It was a boisterous spring,” recalled Thompson, 78. “The west-end peat bogs, with trees on them, floated up the lake.”

Back then, he said, a neighbor tried to head one of the islands off.

“He got out there with his powerboat and tried to pull it out of the way,” Thompson said. “He couldn’t stop it.”

Thompson said the islands of 1926 settled at the mouth of Thompson Creek, the same place this last batch landed.

Now Jones, who swears it’s solid ground, pastures cattle on the spit of land. He’s even plowed it with a tractor.

Thompson said some people have walked on the floating islands, but he wouldn’t.

“They’re very treacherous,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust them. You might walk along and fall through. Then you can’t get back up - you’re trapped.”

The few residents on the northeast end of the lake seem resigned to their new view.

“Mother Nature has a strange way of doing things, and we just have to accept it,” said Schorzman.

“I’d just as soon it (the biggest island) stays where it’s at. I don’t want it floating around in the middle of the lake.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo Map of Thompson Lake area