by Rob Fretz

Created on: November 05, 2008

The fire crackles and pops in the stove as I sit here writing this story in pen on a scrap of paper left here from this summer past. The radio seems to crackle just about as much as the fire does. Lightning dances across the sky touching the land every so often. The strikes are often so close the old windows in this cabin of mine rattle as though some giant was stomping out in the yard. But to me, the sounds are almost musical. To me, this place is as much home as anywhere I have ever been. I grew up out here and some might argue I grew into a man here.

There are trails here used for hunting ducks and made with nothing more than an axe and a lot of sweat. A dock put in each year by hand, made new again the following spring. Everything here is so deeply personal and connected to my own self not just family that came here before me. Even the little house I call a "cabin", was made out here by hand. The well was dug by hand as there wasn't even a road in here back then.

I don't have to look back two or three generations to say, "Things were simpler then". I've seen how they lived life. I know what it's like to grow vegetables and watch them grow all summer just waiting for you to enjoy them in the early fall. For me, fresh means I picked it myself no an hour ago. Less than an hour from garden to plate is what fresh is supposed to taste like. Just like hunting. I've gone out and had a wonderful walk and then came home to this little house and cooked what I went out and got. The nearest grocery store is about a thirty minute drive from here and not worth the bother when I can get what I need here.

Why, there have even been days when I woke up before the sunrise, pushed the canoe away from the shore and just enjoyed the morning light wash over the lake I was in. Fog so think you can't see where the shore went. A loon's eerie cry echoing off the shores to my left. A small fish jumps out of the water not more than a few feet from where my paddle silently caresses the water. The canoe glides across the water, cutting its glass like surface. Perhaps that same fish eating his breakfast will shortly be mine.

This place is something special I have shared in person with only a select few. In word I have described it more than a few times. Yet somehow the words never do it justice. How can you really describe the sun as it slowly rises from the far shore of the lake? Can you describe the orange-yellow glow that comes across the sky just moments before the ball of the sun

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