Up north, 2005

I'm not at all sure why we didn't go "up north" when the kids were growing  up  Probably our missing real family vacations at a cottage in the northwoods is attributable to my devotion to thinking I was a writer.  

Not going was a mistake, maybe even a sin. 

The first time we went, we were just two. It was 2005, and we'd called our old friends in the Twin Cities to find out how people picked out cottages and where we might go. Our friends--Jim and Sally Heynen--said they loved a little place named "The Cry of the Loon" and told us how to get a cottage and where we'd find it.

We did, and it was beautiful, as was the world around it and us.

Up until my legs went out on me, we went "up north" every year--maybe twice, although getting away for the last dozen years wasn't the kind of big deal it was in 2005, when first we lit out up north. Living out in the country after 2012, we felt that a similar sense of  "distance" the north woods used to give us. We were already on vacation if we could see a sunrise and a sunset.

No matter. Right now, there's no place I'd rather be than Cry of the Loon (which, unfortunately, no longer exists--we checked).