It happens every year in early winter, just as the first blasts of arctic air sweep across Maine and begin sealing up its lakes and ponds in ice.

A buzz of anticipation moves through the small, cramped offices at the Maine Warden Service’s regional headquarters in Bangor. Who will be the first person, the wardens wonder, to test the weight-bearing capacity of new ice by driving a vehicle across it and breaking through? Where will it happen, and which warden will have to respond?

This year, Dave Georgia received the job when a young man from Bangor plunged through the thin ice of Plymouth Pond last Saturday while riding his all-terrain vehicle about 200 yards from shore. Two other men also went through on a snowmobile as they tried to reach Georgia. All were fine, as it turned out. But Georgia and the other wardens know the season is just beginning. It will get worse. Soon, people all over Maine will feel the ageless itch to rumble across the ice in trucks and cars, exercising that perilous birthright cherished by northern ice-fishing peoples everywhere. And down they’ll go – a shiny new Chevrolet pickup here, a rusty sedan there, each with a sickening crack, a surge of ice water and a hoarse shout of alarm.

If this treacherous seasonal tradition puzzles you, be assured the wardens can’t really explain its allure either. Every year they issue warnings about unsafe ice, about the hazards of pressure ridges, open water and sneaky currents, and every year vehicles sink to the bottom.

“It seems to be very important for some people to be out there in motor vehicles,” Georgia said with a shrug. “And no matter how many times we warn people, we wind up with a tragedy.”

The wardens all have stories that exemplify the risks people will take to ensure that man and machine never are parted for long. About five Februarys ago, for instance, Wardens Phil Richter and Gary Ballinger were sitting on snowmobiles on the shore of East Grand Lake, eating lunch, when a Jeep Cherokee showed up with two adults and two children inside. The Jeep drove across the lake to the edge of a 4-foot-wide channel of open water caused by a pressure ridge. Then, as the wardens watched, the vehicle backed up to get a running start.

“He’s not really going to do that, is he?” Richter asked Ballinger as the Jeep got up a head of steam and hurtled across the watery expanse to the ice on the other side.

Richter said racing across untested ice on his snowmobile to help someone who has broken through gives him a “hinky feeling,” by which he means it’s spooky. He wonders why some people don’t seem to feel the least bit “hinky” while roaming around out there in their heavy pickups and SUVs.

Two winters ago, in March, Bucksport firefighters placed barricades around an area of open water on Silver Lake. They put up signs that read “Danger. Open Water.” In other words, they did everything possible to keep people away from the obvious hazard.

“But this one guy just drove right over those barricades and straight into the water,” said Ralph Hosford, who patrols the area. “He’s got a reputation around there for being the last person on the ice for the season, and he was going to be that year, too.”

Lt. Tim Liscomb was checking fishing licenses on Damariscotta Lake one day when he approached a group of men standing by their truck. One of the fishermen urged Liscomb to be careful of the thin ice around them. To demonstrate, the fisherman calmly walked just 10 feet from where the truck was parked and broke through the flimsy ice with two pokes of his chisel.

A century ago, said Warden Joe McBrine, loggers understood the

fickle nature of frozen lakes – that they easily could support a horse-drawn load of wood in one section but give way in another. So it was the job of men in leather aprons to spread water on the hauling roads across lakes whenever a crew used it, thereby making the ice bridge ever thicker and stronger.

“Now,” McBrine said, “people use their trucks for speed and easy access and they don’t think enough about what they’re doing. We’re a lazier society, and we want to fish out of a truck with the heater going.”

McBrine said he’s noticed a quirky seasonal disorder that afflicts some fishermen. In spring, when fishermen are eagerly awaiting open water to float their boats, a string of warm days or rain will suggest that the ice is eroding nicely. In early winter, however, when they have ice fishing on the brain, the same string of melting weather is optimistically ignored.

“I’ll bet if you polled fishermen, only a tiny number would say they check the ice before going out,” McBrine said.

The wardens agree that a law banning motor vehicles from frozen bodies of water would help, but they’re not hopeful. One was proposed in 1991, after 17 vehicles went through the ice and six people died. The bill eventually fizzled, though, after opponents argued that the many responsible outdoorspeople should not suffer the loss of their motorized fishing traditions because of the actions of the reckless few.

“Sure it’s frustrating,” McBrine said. “Some years it seems not a week goes by without a vehicle going through. But if people could know what it’s like to pull a victim out of the freezing water, they might think differently.”

Tom Weber’s column appears Wednesday and Saturday.