You've seen the movies, now read the blog post

The cabin we rented was a different one, a little farther north, a little deeper in the forest. It was on the edge of Pike Lake, about ten miles southwest of Grand Marais off a series of progressively narrower and dustier roads.

It was an A-frame, all windows and gorgeous wood, with a funny little sleeping loft that had a tiny porch off the back. I slept up there every night, in the treetops, with only the screen door between me and the bugs and the sound of the loons.

Riley slept with me, and crowded me off the tiny child-size bed. (Both facts of which explain why Doug didn't sleep up there.)

The weather was hot, for northern Minnesota in mid-May--in the 80s, with unrelenting sun and little breeze. And bugs! We have hiked in early spring, late spring, fall, and even winter, but we avoid summer because of the bugs. But this time the bugs found us. Poor Riley was attacked, and his underbelly was swollen and red and covered in huge welts. The swarming bugs on the deck and down at the dock chased us back inside more than we wanted.

Boscoe was briefly stymied by the stairs leading to the cabin--the front deck had eight steps, and the side door had four. The approach to the stairs was rocky and not level, which made it more difficult. That first day, we had to carry him up, squirming and thrashing. Eventually he learned to come at it from the side, where the ground was flatter. And sometimes, to get momentum, he'd just trot all the way around the house and then try to dash up the stairs. Sometimes he made it, sometimes not so much.

Our hikes were short, because of the heat--we only spent an hour or two each day in the woods (on account of a tired old border collie who was wearing a thick and shaggy dog suit).



But that left more time for reading on the upper porch, or down by the lake, or, in the evening, by the woodstove.

I had great plans to teach Riley to swim--the lake has a sharp rocky bottom, and I bought water shoes in Grand Marais so I could wade out with him. But he would have none of it. The world's only springer-Lab that is afraid of water.

Our first day a pair of pileateds hung around the cabin, and on our last day we followed a bald eagle up the trail. In the days in between, we saw a shaggy fox by the side of County Road Seven, we saw deer, we heard the loons, every single night. Night after night, I woke up long past midnight in my little nest in the trees and heard the ululating warble of the loons, and that long haunting three-note cry.

This is what I heard: the wail

And this: the yodel

Now back in the city with traffic, and people, and aging mothers to deal with, and work, so much work, it is easy to let all this loveliness slip away. But it is there, inside us, that trip, those images, those sounds, those lovely cedar smells. All we have to do is stop and think.