To the Cabin
June 3rd, 2005,Over Memorial Day we made our second trip of the year to my family’s lake cabin in northwestern Wisconsin. It’s great to be living near the cabin again–or “the lake” as we also call it. I’ve spent about ten years–a quarter of my life–on the East and West Coasts, where I was fortunate if I could get to the cabin once in a year. Now we may be able to go up many times a year.
The cabin is a simple structure, smaller than the large vacation homes that have become the rule in the last two decades. My grandparents called it a “cottage”; both that and “cabin” seem appropriate. It was built in the 1950’s by my grandfather, father, and uncle. It’s a unique structure, designed by my grandfather and built of concrete blocks. The exterior, painted yellow, is nothing special, but the interior is beautifully done all in wood, even the ceiling. It has two bedrooms (one very small), a bathroom, and a large main room that serves as the kitchen, dining room, and living room.
My dad and I spent quite a few hours getting the dock out into the lake. The dock is L-shaped and has wheels on the deep-water end. This is an improvement over our previous docks, because two people can use a winch-like device called a “come-along” to let it down into the water; getting the earlier docks out required at least four people.
But the job isn’t as straightforward as it might sound, in part because the other end of the dock is not on wheels and is too heavy for two people to lift. The entire job involves lots of maneuvering, tying and untying of ropes, and placement of boards at key locations. We also had to move the dock down the steep, eroded bank at an awkward angle so that we could avoid large rocks. We probably took at least eight hours total to do the job.
We caught the tail end of one of spring’s great sights at the lake–the trillium flowers. There were only a few trilliums left last weekend. I’ve seen some years when everywhere you look you could see this white or pinkish woodland flower. I didn’t see any pink blooms, unfortunately. Perhaps next year.