On Blue Lake

           

From Minneapolis we headed north on Highway 169, past Anoka, Elk River, and Milaca, rounding curves, past fields of corn and soy beans and woods of birch. Dad was driving the green Rambler station wagon. Mamma was next to him. Kay and I shared the back seat, and in the cargo area behind were suitcases, boxes of food, and library books. We followed the shore of giant Mille Lacs Lake, then took Highway 6 to Crosby. The traffic thinned and the highway lost lanes, until we were driving on two-laned blacktop through the little town of Emily. Finally we followed a narrow road through thick birches, glimpsing the blue of lakes at every curve in the road, until we slowed, looking for the right turn-off, and there it was, the cabin on Blue Lake.

            The cabin belongs to a business acquaintance of Dad’s.  We borrowed it several times each summer.  We started going when I was about 11, and stopped—I can’t remember when. In my memories I think I am always 11.

            The cabin is magic in my memory. At home we were usually busy with our separate activities: Daddy working at General Mills or golfing or working in the yard or watching sports on TV; Mamma teaching at Fern Hill School or cooking or cleaning or ironing or sewing; Kay with her friends or at Edina High School or in her room studying. Patty was in college by the time we moved to Minnesota, and soon was married and living in Utah. We had left Richard and his family back in California. On Idlewood Drive in Edina, I spent a lot of time alone. But the cabin was different. We were alone together, with no TV, no phone, no jobs or responsibilities, on the shores of Blue Lake.

            The cabin was not rustic—more like a small house.  You entered from the driveway into the kitchen, a narrow corridor, very shiny, with blue metal cabinets, a stainless steel sink, white oven and fridge.  It had fully stocked cupboards, with smooth blue Melmac dishes.

            Left of the kitchen was the main living area:  a table closest to the kitchen door and sofas surrounding the fireplace at the north.  To the west were two small bedrooms, each with twin beds, with a bathroom between them.  To the east was a screened porch, overlooking the lake.

            When we came, Mamma would start putting away groceries while Dad, Kay and I would head down to the dock. Hundreds of wooden steps led down the steep bank to the shore. Beside the dock, upside down in the weeds rested the heavy wooden rowboat. We tugged and pushed to overturn it, and pulled it out to the water. Dad showed us how to fit the oars in their locks and Kay and I gingerly boarded. Dad took us out from the dock, demonstrating rowing techniques. Carefully trading places in deliciously delicate balance, Kay and I both learned to row.

            I loved to row that old wooden boat. I was a skinny eleven-year-old, last pick for any sport on the playground, the slowest runner in my class, a bookworm. Rowing was something I could control, a power over our movement. Facing the stern, I loved to feel the pull of the oars against the water and see the heavy boat scoot along with each stroke. I loved to turn the boat, pulling on the right oar to turn left, the left oar to turn right, or pulling the two oars in opposite directions to spin in circles on quiet Blue Lake.

            Probably at least 1000 of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes are called Blue.  But this was our Blue Lake.  It’s a small, calm oval, nearly private.  We think there’s another cabin across the lake, and a lodge of some kind at the south end, but we never see anyone.  Once, someone took a motorboat out on the lake. “What a racket!” We complained. The gall of anyone invading our lake!

            The lake was ours when we were there.  One morning early Daddy and I were up before the others.  The loon was calling his eerie laughing cry from the north end of the lake.  We descended the steps down the steep bank, past the dense undergrowth and birches to the boat tied at the end of the narrow dock.

            We rowed towards the loon’s cry.  Dad would row, and then we would, carefully, in the bobbing boat change positions, so I could row.  My palms grew calluses at Blue Lake, as I pulled the oars through the smooth resistance of the water, ripples forming, spreading, and receding, and forming again in mesmerizing symmetry.  As I rowed I felt strong-- the maker of ripples, the mover of boats.  The boat moved smoothly along and we marked our progress by the trees along the shore.  “Yo ho heave ho,” we would sing.  “Yo ho heave ho. See that birch tree drawing nigh.  Soon that birch tree we’ll be nigh.”

            Soon we reached the water lily fields at the shallow end of the lake.  White lilies on the flat green leaves surrounded the boat.  I reached out to touch them, smell their waxen scent.  We drifted among the “pop weed,” the water reed that popped apart like pop beads.  I pulled them up and made necklaces.

            As we rowed back, Dad talked to me.  He asked me what I wanted to do, and took me seriously when I said I wanted to be a writer, though there I was, only eleven.

            Home at the cabin we climbed the wooden stairs, and opened the door to the smell of Mommy’s pancakes on the table, and the others all gathered around.  I think Richard and Cathy were there, with the babies Douglas and Suzanne. Everyone was talking and the babies were crying, and I was so happy to be there with my family.

            What did we do during our days at Blue Lake?  We came prepared with stacks of library books.  Mamma and Daddy would both read in on the screened porch or in the living room.  At the cabin is the only place where I remember Mamma reading in the middle of the day.  We would eat and read and sleep.  When Patty and her husband were there once they got out the cards and played canasta with Dad.  Canasta was a family game from before I was big enough to play, so I never did learn how and felt left out.  But Patty taught me how to play solitaire, and best of all, how to shuffle the deck, then bridge the cards back into a pile.  I could do that for hours.  Mom and Dad sometimes went for walks, along the country roads, but I never joined them.  I was old enough, I wanted my own space.  When they walked, I stayed at the cabin to read, or went down to the dock to lie on my belly and watch schools of minnows dart and turn and dart again, all in startling uniformity.

            When I did go walking with them, we always had tick check on our return. One by one, we would strip down in the bathroom and check every inch for those determined critters, who would cling on, their heads buried deep in the flesh unless they were surprised out by alcohol or a match. One particularly enterprising tick lived happily on my scalp for several weeks after a Blue Lake trip, only to be discovered by the hair dresser when I went in for a trim.

            When we were bored with the cabin and the lake, Dad would load us in the car and we would go for a ride.  We’d go into the town of Emily for supplies at the little country store, or we would drive further, to Bemidji to see the huge Paul Bunyan statue,  to Duluth to see the rocky shores of Lake Superior, or far north to International Falls, on the border with Canada.  At a gift shop there I bought an eight-inch long canoe, made with real birch bark, decorated with real porcupine needles.  I have it still, and with the real obsidian arrow head we found in the woods near Blue Lake, treasures my children all took for Show and Tell when they studied the Native American unit in kindergarten.

            Sometimes we brought visitors to Blue Lake.  Patty one summer had a college friend named Carmen come to stay.  Carmen was having some trouble or other, and needed a place to come to.  But I didn’t concern myself, at age 11, much with her past.  I just fell in love with her.  Carmen stayed home and played with me while Patty went to work.  We went for walks, exploring the neighborhood.  Carmen found adventure around every corner.  And she teased me.  “What?! Don’t you know what’s on TV now?  Surely you must have the TV schedule memorized?  What’s the matter with you!”

            When we took Carmen to Blue Lake she thought it was crazy that we had that lovely blue water and never swam in it.  Never mind that the brush grew not only up to the lake, but in it, filling the shallow water with slimy weeds and stickery branches.  Carmen got us all out in the water in our shorts, clearing out all the plant life.  “We can do it!”  She called, “Don’t give up.”  She laughed and talked and kept us working all through the bug-filled afternoon.  And we did clear it out.  But the next time we came, those tenacious plants were back.

            Joe Naylor was Kay’s friend.  She met him in England.  She was on her way home from Study Abroad in France; he had just completed a mission in England.  He went home to Texas, but soon came to Minnesota to see Kay.  Joe was tall and lanky.  He could eat incredible amounts of food, hunched over his plate.  When Kay and I did the dishes, he would hang around the kitchen finishing up all the leftovers so we wouldn’t need to put them away in the refrigerator. 

            In the evenings, he pulled out his guitar and wrapped himself around it.  He sang mournful ballads and happy lullabies.  When we took Joe to Blue Lake, he sang until I was lost in the music. “Wynken, Blinken, and Nod one night, sailed out in a wooden boat.”  Kay may have loved Joe, but I loved his songs and his instrument.  I knew I had to have a guitar; my life depended on it.  Before we left the cabin, I had begged Joe until he taught me the chords to my favorite of his songs. I practiced on his guitar until my fingers hurt. Then when we returned on Monday, Joe and Kay took me to music stores all over Minneapolis until he found me a decent instrument I could buy with the 30 dollars I had saved from my babysitting money.  I spent the next three years wrapped around the guitar on the living room couch, crooning ballads and folk songs.

            Blue Lake was the perfect place to become mesmerized by Joe’s music. Evenings are quiet there.  No TV, no radio.  Crickets chirping.  One night Mamma and I walked down the wooden stairs in the darkness, down to the boat tied on the dock.  Mamma, who couldn’t swim a stroke, was there to save me if the boat sank.

Mamma sat in the stern; I rowed out in the silence of the night, slipping the oars soundlessly into the water, lifting them slowly to watch the drops glisten in the moonlight as they fell back in the lake.  We reached the center.  The moon had risen, full and golden, spreading a clear path along the lake.  I turned the boat, and with my eyes on the glowing moon, rowed back, smoothly, to my family at Blue Lake.