Two Lovers

When we closed the cabin last November, I had a sad feeling knowing that I wouldn’t be back to Bond Lake till spring. The wind in the trees, the eagles soaring past, the squirrels hopping on high branches, busy collecting food for winter. Oh how I would miss all that. I cut my teeth in the Northwoods. My Mom and Dad had been bringing me up here for all my summers since I was a baby. It is in my soul. Bond Lake is home.

It’d be one long winter at our Edina apartment with no plans to travel south for the winter to Arizona or Florida because of the lock down.

Now it is April and the buds are popping on the trees a month early. It turned out to be not so bad here in Edina. I had a new plan in place to get some City Creek work done along with more time for guitar playing and painting, stuff that had been on the back burner for a year or two. I was able to accomplish some things that never would have gotten done, had I been able to keep up with a social life. Covid made staying at home a sensible thing to do. When the air was frigid outside, the windows let the sunshine pour into our corner apartment. Everytime I walked in, I wanted to curl up in the sunshine and read a good book.

Joe and I bundled up with scarves, hats, and gloves and discovered some beautiful walks and ski outings at the nearby parks. Not to mention the fun of walking over to the Blick’s Art store, Target , Lunds, or Room and Board to do a little shopping with masks slapped to our faces, of course. I was so thankful many of the stores stayed open.

March came in like a lion, but by the end of the month, temps were warming and snow was melting. It was time to open things back up at the cabin. First steps into the porch showed evidence of an unwelcome visitor. Cracked acorns and other creature debris littered the bed. Since we built the place four years ago, we’d never had a mouse in the house. Or was it a chipmunk? How’d that little bastard get in? His gift of droppings on my pillow was not appreciated and put an unsettling aura about the cabin. Where was he? Will we discover more destruction? Fortunately, there is a nice solid door between the porch and the rest of the cabin so we were pleased to see that he’d remained on the porch. It seemed to have been just one lone critter. Perhaps he snuck in when Bergman came to close the cabin or maybe he found that teensy crack at the bottom of the door. At any rate, it seemed he was gone now. The acorn shavings on the bed brought home the realities of life in the Northwoods.

We are at war with the animals.
I understand this. It’s their home and we are the intruders, but really do the deer have to eat my gorgeous petunias? And why do the squirrels nest in our lawn furniture when they have the forest nooks and crannies? And then of course, the ticks fall on you and suck your blood, mosquitos buzz your head and leave itchy bites. This stuff is enough to make some people hate the Northwoods. I get it. It is annoying. But when you are raised in it, you are proud of your acquired toughness as a result of the exposure from babyhood and you take it in stride. Oh another tick, throw it in the toilet. Daddy long legs? Grab him and put him outside. Mosquitoes? Just bundle up. Well, the beauty of March, April, and May is that the annoyances are at a minimum. Not all the creatures have awakened from hibernation.

An eagle soars over the shoreline looking for a likely lunch. The lake looks like steel. Hard frozen troughs where the ice cracked and froze again. The expansive beauty of the night sky sparkles through the porch windows with the full moon and the north star hanging in the sky, a sign of the constancy of things.

Once I’d convinced myself that the critters were outside, I could settle in and feel cozy. The up north woods and the quiet lake fills my soul blanketing me with a profound peace and sense of well being.

That night I must say I had the best sleep I’d had in months. The cold air and the electric blanket nestled me into the perfect sandwich of comfort. Gone were the worries about work and the pandemic and all the other problems my mind likes to grab onto that cause stress. Gone. I had a good dream. I dreamt I was with my loved ones, laughing and having profound, joyous conversations saying exactly what was on my mind. A peaceful, renewing dream free of anxiety.

I woke up happy and eager to get to writing as I settled in on the porch with my coffee and laptop. My chair is in the corner so I have windows looking out to the woods on all three sides. The sense of joy and peace was overwhelming and prompted me to wonder.

Do we need to keep the apartment in Edina?
I love it so much up here. Could we just live here year round and just go south for two or three months in the winter? What would that be like? We’d save a bundle on rent. Especially during the summer months when no one is at the apartment. I am a different person up here at the cabin. A person I like. What is it that is so nourishing to the soul? Could it work to just live up here full time?

That decision is wrought with confusion because I do understand that a big part of the joy I am feeling right now is a direct result of the fresh look at the cabin. Do I love it extra good because we have spent the winter elsewhere? How much of my love is founded in the contrast between the city life and the country life? Maybe I want to be here forever because I am not here forever. My heart wants to choose one place and stick to it. A place to keep as my home. A place to build connections. My body wants to settle down. It is difficult planning the refrigerator for two places, gathering up the stuff that goes back and forth, like my guitar and laptop. I can’t help comparing and wanting to pick one over the other. I am monogamous at heart. I don’t love dividing my attention between two lovers.

But the fact of the matter is that if I had been upnorth all winter, would I have become bored and missed the city life? Perhaps one is great because it is contrasted with the other. The Yin and Yang. City life is nourishing as well as cabin life. But why do I sleep so much better when I am up at the cabin in the Wisconsin Northwoods? When I came home I was back to my old tricks of waking up in the middle of the night wide awake. Too hot, tossing my foot out of the covers, rolling my arm under the pillow to make it bunch up a bit, then rolling on my belly. Is it the noise from outside, the trucks pulling into the Lunds parking lot at the wee hours of the night that wake me? Do the people vibes, the sounds, the electricity from all the apartments around me seep into my bones and cause unrest. Jazzed up discontent? There are good sounds and not so good sounds. The wind that comes in off the lake and whistles through the trees lulls me to sleep during an afternoon nap. The snow plow that scrapes the pavement and dumps outside my apartment window makes a white noise machine—set at HIGH— a necessity for afternoon naps.

Oh I don’t know but it is kind of a dilemma this back and forth. It is like having two lovers and the mind always wants to pick one. I love to be home. And the feeling of being home but where is home? Apartment living is definitely a new life for me. so foreign to me. I was raised in the city in quiet neighborhood and then in the suburbs in a quiet home on the end of a culdesac and then spent so much of my growing-up time upnorth. My heart is used to the quiet. But then I love seeing people on the Centennial Lakes path. Sometimes when I connect with a smile, I feel a surge of energy and love for the life of the city. Everyone busy, going places, and the hum of the traffic out on France avenue can sound like a waterfall if you are in the right frame of mind. The ready amenities. The restaurants. The shops. The utter convenience. And besides, I haven’t seen an ant or a fly in our apartment. A mouse would have a hard time finding his way up to the sixth floor.

These bonuses are not easily tossed away. So the dilemma of two lovers probably will stay floating in space for now. Someday, the answer may be clear, but right now I feel eternally blessed to have such a dilemma and I think I can handle my problem. Maybe the answer is in learning to go with the flow. As I sit in the apartment today I look forward to next week when we return to Bond Lake. I guess I can just do whatever I dang well please. No decisions to be made today. I can live with two lovers. Maybe I actually like it.