Northern Exposure

If you are a Minnesotan, during our summer months, heading Up North on the week-ends has become part of your lexicon. Every Friday night, many of us partake in a dreaded ritual to escape the weekday grind. We languor on highways in bored acceptance, forming a sort of mad vehicle parade as we creep out of the Twin Cities in slow miles. Our cars are crammed with swimsuits and beach towels, heavy sweatshirts and jeans. With coolers full of beer and hamburgers, salty cold cuts and sliced cheese and often a big watermelon we hope will be perfection when we cut it open, surrounded by a gaggle of kids.

All heading to our own place, Up North.

For me, this place started on my husband’s side in the late 1930’s, built by Finnish men who were seasoned in construction and bonded by family ties. Though solid, it sits on stilts that are not quite deep enough to penetrate the frost line, the building heaving to and fro with the movements of the earth over the many decades, though no one in five generations seems to mind. Most years, my husband and his four other siblings along with their children, and now their children’s children will meet there for the Fourth of July, a tradition that I’m sure has repeated and overlapped since those Finnish men pounded in that last nail.

The cabin is surrounded by beautiful trees of maple and birch, walnut and oak – and the singular white pine. Unlike the evergreen; it is taller in trunk with branches of separated fingers topped with clumps of soft diffused needles, some of them have stood guard on the property for well over a century. For our clan, the cabin is a place that has come to mean more than simply relaxing; it is also a place of history and future-- of permissions to go back to who you were before life layered you with obligations, and consideration for who you might yet become. It is seeing new generations sit at the same gold flecked Formica table in messy baby chairs, while the oldest generation sits next to them, aging to papery delicacy in silent smiles and sleepy nods.

In the mornings I go for walks, cutting wild flowers to bring back to a deep green vase freckled with white and gold bits I have grown fond of. I will fill it with buttercups and purple clover, ferns and prairie grasses and if I’m very lucky, I will find a wild snap dragon or orchid. By noon, we spread out in hot drowsiness; outside we are on lawn chairs under green canopies where the blue sky presses between the spaces of leaves, drinking instant lemonade that tastes of minerals.

Inside we are on cots, or couches, or beds, with the sounds of whirring fans trying to push the heavy air, books in cracked leather shells tenderly held in our hands. By two or three we get up to revive ourselves in cool dark waters, feeling for a time like we are young and carefree as we jump off the dock in childish splendor, avoid touching seaweed with our toes, rest as we warm up in the sun. This year, the lake was covered in a hazy gauze of smoke from the Canadian fires turning both moon rise and sunset a deep red-orange, eerie and spectacular.

And on the Fourth of July I demand to herd everyone and bundle up against the evening chill, where in the darkness, save for the bobbing lights of the gathered flotilla, I watched with deep appreciation for all our country and family has given me, the fiery exhalations of fireworks bloom in the night sky.