SOMERVILLE, Mass. — BECAUSE part of me hates winter, I go ice fishing.

Each year, the Meredith Rotary Club in New Hampshire hosts an ice fishing tournament. Tens of thousands in cash prizes draw people from across New England. Each year, I drag along as many friends as I can.

“Thanks for the invite, but ice fishing literally combines my two least favorite things on planet Earth — fishing and cold,” a friend R.S.V.P.’d this year. “There are very few things I would rather do LESS than go on this trip.”

Ice fishing on paper reads like a checklist for the clinically depressed: isolation, risky behavior, unrealistic expectations, drinking. So when describing the weekend to friends I give a little presentation: Picture days tending to the frozen tundra, using wit and muscle to hunt creatures of the depths for a bounty. Picture nights around the wood stove.

“I’m, like, really excited,” my friend Peter, who has come before, tells me a month before this year’s trip. “People ask me ‘what’s new’ and I tell them ‘ice fishing,’ ” he laughs. “It’s like the main thing in my life right now that I’m looking forward to.” Peter’s ignoring the fact that we haven’t caught a fish in five years. This is why I like him.