We just returned from 5 days at Big Pine Lake near Perham, Minnesota.
My first trip there was 50 years ago when I was almost 1 year old. I got the mumps. I remember pictures of me sitting with my Uncle Ray on a cot in Cabin 4 at Grand View Heights resort looking like a chipmunk.
A few years later, at the grand age of 5, I blue my first bubble gum bubble in cabin 4. I held it in my mouth and carefully walked down the path to the boathouse store to show my big brother and sister my amazing feat.
A couple years later, my brother offered to buy me a 10 cent popsicle if I would not say a word for one hour. Which I did, annoying him with written notes the entire hour as he hung out with the cool teenagers at the store. He came through. I decided it wasn’t worth it…I like talking way too much…so I never did that again.
Then my parents bought the Little Red Cabin down the beach. I was 16. Our yearly adventures to Big Pine became more frequent, going several times in a summer. I loved playing cards with the other teenagers, water-skiing, drinking “black cows,” and going to the drive-in movie.
Then came the college years, introducing my college friends to the lake and my future husband (this was a test that he had to pass!) There was great fishing and fish-fries (my dad makes the best fish ever!), and the cornbread casserole my mom was famous for. They were always welcoming to whoever visited. I remember the first year I missed going to the lake. I was about 20. I had a hard time. How could I miss a summer at Big Pine?
Over the next 30 years my kids have done the same things I did. Skiied behind the same boat (a 1969 Rambler that is now “vintage’), played the same cootie game and cards, drank from the same bright aluminum drinking “glasses”, and bought bait at the same bait shop in town. This week my daugter introduced her husband to Big Pine.
Things have changed some at Big Pine Lake. Some, but not much. The resort we used to stay in fell into great disrepair and the city tore it down to make a public access. Some of the cabins on our beach have new owners. But many of them are in the same families. The fish are less abundant, and there are jet skiis (much more noise on the weekend than there used to be). There are a few new shops in town.
But so much is the same. It is comforting. In this fast-changing world it is great to have a place where my roots go deep. As the water runs deep, so do my memories. As we sat in the boat fishing we sang the same songs my dad and I used to sing when I was 5. We can still harmonize! We talked about the quiet, the water color, the shoreline. We watched an eagle fishing, and saw a family of loons. I sat on the beach with my book for hours in the gentle breeze and a cup of tea. We “plugged” by moonlight and brought in Northern Pike. We had popcorn, “black cows”, and played “dutch blitz”. We slept to the sound of waves crashing and a lake breeze. We smashed lots of bugs that made their way into the cabin. And we ate way too much fried fish and cornbread casserole.
We read from the journal that dates into the 70’s and remembered it all. We looked at the painted rocks that line the porch, painted over decades on rainy days. We missed mom (grandma).
Somehow in the last 5 days I have remembered who I am – who I have always been and always will be. I have grown and changed so much. Yet my sense of place became so real to me. I am so thankful for Big Pine. For the family times it recalls, for the quiet waters it stirs in my soul, and for the fact that it is still there, much the same: a place to come home to.
Thank you Daddy for a great week!
2 million plastic beverage bottles – the number used every 5 minutes in the U.S
60,000 plastic bags, the number used every 5 seconds in the U.S.
