Anniversary Thoughts

Today, I celebrate 20 years of marriage. Annie and I were married on a lovely, warm fall day.  80 degrees and blustery.  The next day it snowed.

Fearlessly, we headed to Gohere Bay, Cyclone Pointe and other settings on the Lake of the Woods.  Arriving late in the afternoon, there was not enough daylight to connect the water lines and the floor heater (which was carried in my father's pickup truck, necessitating me being cramped with the luggage in the cab) would not light.  So I bulit a fire, we played some 'killer solitaire' by gaslight and we headed off to bed.

I woke to an empty spot in the bed next to me.  Many thoughts crossed my mind..."It's only been three days, she wouldn't leave me already...where would she go...I didn't hear the boat start..."

I was jarred back to reality by the 'thock' of the screen door slamming.  Then she was standing in the doorway, down ski coat over her pajamas and sneakers with the tea kettle in her hand. 

"I wanted some tea," was all she said.  What a girl, she had wandered down to the shore to get water for her morning tea.

I have been on a thread about change and what better time to look back.  I have what I would consider a very real view of the world. I know what happens to man-made things when nature gets hold of them. In a way, it's one of the things I appreciate most. I remember visiting abandoned cabins decomposing along shorelines or on hills buildings sturdily built to survive storms and snows.

To think of it another way, we, as people, are constantly growing and changing. Hair gets lighter and darker, tan lines come and go, we experience things and those experiences change us, often in ways we don't even realize. Yet it is that growth that, in time, makes us more than our physical attributes. More attractive in ways than younger, physically gifted folks who lack the conviction and wisdom of experience and age.

I sometimes imagine the camp covered in moss, resting peacefully, working days behind it where people tried to carve a static living in a place nature and design never intended. The place is meant to be transitory and untamed. Perhaps that's why everything is such a struggle. Some places weren't meant for all the conveniences of modern society. Those who manage to last year after year understand the challenges of nature, constantly renewing itself.  Things we consider permanent only leave scars behind years later.  I remember a bunkhouse on the top of the island at the Camp.  When I returned years later, it was a junkpile, walls collapsed and floor heaped with garbage.  Now it doesn't even show on the aerial photographs.

Everything that is now old, was once new.  Every tradition was once an idea that somebody nursed, scared and nervous, before they brought it out to daylight.  And, sure enough, somebody was there to give a hundred reasons it wouldn't work or was wrong or would never last.  Today, the Camp could never be built, and maybe it shouldn't have been.  But since 1922 or 1929 or 1932, whenever it began, it has brought people together who would never have met otherwise.  Similarly, Annie and I have done a lot of crazy things together and built a few connections of our own.