The view from here

Not to say that I've wasted my month here thus far, but as the calendar reminds me that I only have two weeks left here, I think about all the ways I could have better managed me time. Sunday was the perfect example of what every single day here should be. After waking up at 8:30, I spent my day knitting, reading for my online class, finding jobs online to apply for, making more sculpy jewelry, working on metal-wrapped stone pendants, walking to my gramma's, kayaking back from there to our cabin, swimming, taking photographs and playing cards with my family. And if you even think about saying that I should be doing nothing because I'm on vacation...I loathe you. 

What I mean to convey through that laundry list of my day-to-day hobbies is that my ideal day is that right there. And that should have been the majority of every day here. But I have accomplished quite a bit, and hindsight is 20/20, so that's that. I can only enjoy what my summer has been, and look forward to these next two weeks. 

And I cannot even fathom how quickly these two upcoming weeks will be. Until this past weekend, my entire summer had essentially just been shared with my mother, my aunt Camille, and my grandmother. But as my aunt departed on Thursday, my mother's younger brother arrived with his family on Saturday. And as they depart this Thursday, the influx of my entire family will begin to arrive Saturday and Sunday. Cousins, mom's cousins, second-cousin-once-removeds, they will all flutter into the nearby cabins for our family reunion, to take place the first full weekend of August. And then, just a couple short days after the reunion, my mother and I will make our way back to Maryland, where reality stares us in the face.

This all sounds so melancholy. I don't mean for it to be. It has essentially just taken me by surprise, the speed at which this summer is whirring past me. Deep down, I knew it would, but the realization still startled me a bit when it jumped out and announced its arrival.

When I arrive back in Maryland, my real gauge of how successful this summer is will be if I can keep this frame of mind back in the real world. If I will be able to focus on my career, and on getting into grad school, and on the hobbies that I so adore. If I can remain productive and just...happy. From my viewpoint here in Northern Minnesota, from atop the clouds of my own personal heaven, I think this summer will be a success. But, to quote my own personal mantra....We'll see.

And in case you're wondering what the view from my own personal heaven looks like, enjoy some of the shots I've taken over the last few days. 

-K

Can I have a pint of Leine's Amber? Sorry we only have 22oz and 16oz

The last few days have been fairly uneventful. My awful sleep schedule has sequestered me to my bed til noon each day, so I spent the last two nights trying to pull all-nighters to reset myself. It makes sense in my world, I assure you. Anyway, I succeeded last night, so with any hope, I'll be crashing in about half an hour. But in the meantime, I'm going to blog my silly blog, and start reading the new Elizabeth Gilbert book, which I just ordered from Amazon. 

It's a pretty sweet world we live in, where I can be out on my lake, twenty minutes from even a grocery store, yet I can order books and supplies online and have them dropped at my doorstep two days later. 

This evening, my mother and I went into Virginia, (you know, the home of the nearest Target and Walgreens? 40 minutes away?) to shop and run errands. Since it was late afternoon when we went into town, we opted to get dinner at a regional chain after our shopping. We sat down, and I began to peruse the beer and wine menu because, when we go out for dinner, I have a habit of getting a beer. It gives me the nice excuse to try local brews.

The only local beer on their list was a Summit Pale Ale, and while I appreciate the St. Paul brewery, I found their Horizon Red Ale to even be too hoppy for me, so I definitely avoided their IPA. (Aside from Summit, the only other Minnesota beer I've found in restaurants or liquor stores is the Lake Superior Mesabi Red Ale, which is phenomenal.) So this evening, I decided that even though I can find it anywhere, I would go for a Leinenkugel's Amber. Now, although Leine's is distributed throughout the country, they are still a microbrew located in Chippewa Falls, WI. And since we pass the brewery en route here, I think that's close enough to local. But enough of my inner monologue. I picked the brew, now time to order. 

I always wait til I order my meal to order a beer, because I don't want to finish it before food even comes out. So after our order, I ask the waitress if I could have a pint of Leinenkugal Amber. She looks at me, quite concerned, and explains that they don't have pints. Perplexed, I ask her what size beers they do have. She thinks for a moment, and let's me know that they have 22oz and 16oz. I smile, ask for a 16oz, and wait until she is out of earshot before I quickly raise my palm to my face and mutter to my mother...

'A pint is 16 ounces.'

At least we both got a good laugh from it. And I got my beer, so I cannot complain. But I do need to find a better selection of local beer, because I know it's around here somewhere, I just need to hunt it down...

And now, since I don't have any pictures of, you know, beer, enjoy some miscellaneous shots I haven't had the excuse to post yet!

-K

I need my memory. Memory!! Huh, what?

In my entire family, there are very few people even close to my age. I have three cousins within five years, and another two second cousins within 3 years, but that leaves about 70 relatives that are much younger or much, much older. Surprisingly, I know, most of my family falls in the latter category. But since I was young, that fact never really phased me. With my mom being a teacher, I spent every summer, all summer, here at my cabin until I was about 14, and thereafter I would spend between 2-4 weeks here. 

In other words, I have spent a lot of my life here in this cabin. With no one my age around. 

When I was really young, this was an issue to me, but once I hit teenagedom, I was content enough to play cards and visit with my family. Which leads me to this summer. Just after my mother and I arrived at our cabin, the Fourth of July weekend hit. I briefly visited with my mom's cousins, and four of their blond daughters, and countless of their blond spawn. And my eldest brother was here. 

 (I told you, blond spawn.)

But aside from that long weekend, it's really just been my mother and I during the days, joined by my aunt and my gramma to play cards at night. Which is interesting, to say the least. Though our combined competitive drives add up for some serious, silent game play, it's pretty phenomenal that we get the chance experience that each night. I think of the plethora of people who don't like their immediate family, let alone their extended family. Or even if they like those related to them, they don't always get the chance to spend significant time with them. 

Tonight, I opted to sit out on games, but sat by to knit* as my gramma, my aunt and my mother played a game of suicide rummy. (If you're lucky enough, one day I'll explain that overcomplicated card lovefest to you.) I often chimed into their conversations of current events, medicine, birds and canoe trips, but for the most part I was engulfed in my project. So engulfed that I didn't even respond to my recent name, 'Memory!' (queue facepalm in 3...2..) Yes, as I sat innocently knitting, my mother couldn't remember something, and so kindly called for her memory to help her out. So she literally called out for her memory to assist her. Only as she and my aunt began giggling at her absurdity did I realize that oh...she meant me. But these are the kind of silly stories that sum up my experiences at the lake. And I think that's pretty impressive.

And if I haven't painted a sufficient example of what cards and visits with my aging family is like, well, I have photographic back-up of course!

-K

*And yes, I realize the irony of me discussing how I'm surrounded by a bunch of old geezers, and I'm knitting while playing cards with them. Commence laughter. 

Dear Minnesota..

Dear Minnesota:

Though your pristine beauty has afforded me great joy during my summers with you, I am reminded tonight that you are not, in fact, perfect. Surely, I avoid your painfully chilly winters that seem to dump yards of snow, and your record breaking, negative 60, temperatures. But during my lazy summer stays with you, I enjoy even the stormiest bouts of lightening, and the chilliest of evening breezes. That being said, I acknowledge that you are the land of ten thousand lakes. Lake being the sort of habitat that mosquitoes just love. And I acknowledge that your residents jokingly refer to those buzzing little pests as the true state bird. Truth be told, I am reminded nearly every day, that those little bugs are out to drink my blood, and in thinning said blood, make me itch like a mother- 

...

But really, Minnesota, my dear and loyal companion. THIS IS EFFING RIDICULOUS!!!

With no ill intentions meant, I really do love you. Do you just think you might be able to amend this situation somehow? I would be forever indebted to you.

With love and optimism for the future,

Karianna

A shower!! At Marvilion!

As previously mentioned, we don't have plumbing at our wonderful Marvilion. Though it's been a bit of an inconvenience at times, it's never been a major issue to us - After all, my grandmother's cabin, a half mile walk down the road, allows us to be able to shower on a regular basis, and the lake at our fingertips allows us an easy way to wash our hair, etc. 

But now, at last, we have a shower at the cabin.

Last fall, my mom contracted a guy to build a brand new outdoor bathhouse/sauna for our place. Up until then, we had a building, which used to be a proper outhouse, that housed our composting toilet. The contractor tore that down and rebuilt a gorgeous new building that includes a large sauna, a double shower, our composting toilet, and a double sink. With an electric pump bringing lake water up from the shore, we have (undrinkable, but,) usable plumbing!!

Because of a few set backs, the shower wasn't quite usable for the first couple weeks of us being here. But lo and behold, this afternoon I actually used the shower.

I don't think you quite comprehend how awesome this was. Yes, you heard me. I'm excited to have taken a shower. Now stop judging. 

In other news, with wild blueberries in full bloom up here, my mother and I went for a walk the other day to harvest a few. Though someone had already gone through and picked all the ripe little berries, we got a beautiful walk out of our trip, and I snapped a few photos of the flora surrounding us. Enjoy! 

 -K

I can handle this

Since waking up at 10:30am this morning, I changed directly into my swimsuit, laid out on the deck while working on my online class, looked up some more online classes to take this fall, started bookmarking some jobs to apply for once I update my resume, and requested information from the grad school of my dreams. Oh, and I went swimming.

I cannot complain about days like today. Life is good. I need this. 

-K

Nutella and Peanut Butter

Eating habits at the lake are peculiar.

My mother doesn't really cook - she opts for nibbling often instead of indulging in full meals. Which is fine for me for 2 meals per day, but when it comes to dinner, I need something substantial. Because of this, I often end up cooking us dinner, having to remind my mother that, oh yeah, we need a meal. I enjoy cooking, so it works. However, for some reason I have yet to determine, my eating habits at the lake vary quite a lot from those at home. 

And yes, I just asked my mother, the same goes for her.

I'm sure a lot has to do with the fact that it's summer, so we're eating a lot of fresh veggies and fruits. And the fact that we only have one electric burner. And that we have to wash all our dishes by hand, with no running water. If nothing else, all this means is that we eat a lot of sandwiches here. A lot.

Anyway, since I came up to the lake I've been very attentive to what I've been eating. Mostly because I was doing so much physical labor at Ruby's, I knew that I couldn't eat as much here or I would gain a lot of weight...fast. That, in conjunction with wanting to lose a bit of weight, has made me very aware of what I eat.

Which includes nutella and peanut butter. Okay, so that doesn't exactly fit into a health food kick, but everything's fine in moderation, right? :) But seriously, have you ever had a sandwich of just nutella and creamy peanut butter? Aaaaaamazing. 

This may the most banal thing to blog about, but it's been interesting for me to pay attention to while I've been up here. Vacation allows one to notice the menial things that are too superfluous to notice while busy. It's kinda awesome, isn't it?
...
On a totally separate note, we have a psycho deer living on our property up here. We've seen her many times, by herself, grazing in our meadows. But apparently she hates us. We think she has a little fawn nearby, but this doe is outright aggressive! If anyone is outside, including our quite deaf dog, she will actually come closer to us and start making these weird huffing/clicking noises. It's very odd. But she's cute, see??! 

Though the dog is safely inside, now, I was afraid the deer was gonna charge the poor thing as she ignorantly went on sniffing through the grass. Oh well, no deer injuries today. There's just danger everywhere you look around here, I guess. ha. haha. Alright, enough mindless rambling. Time to get back to working on my online class. Vacation is wonderful.


-K

The Coolest Small Town in America

The quaint little town of Cook is adorable, and well...quaint. And the lake is a world of it's own. But Ely, MN is my own personal heaven on Earth. As one of the two gateways to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, the town of under 4,000 draws artists, writers and overall hippies from all over the world. Can you feel my heart melting at the thought of thousands of hippies in one, small Midwestern town? You should. 

In Ely, the shopping includes the home galleries of National Geographic photographers, clothing outfitters selling only American made and locally printed t-shirts, and hiking and camping outfitters. Kayaks and Canoes for sale litter the sidewalks. And as opposed to the American Apparel, green movement bullshit, it doesn't hold the slightest bit of pretension. It's not because it's a scene, it's real.


Can you tell that I'm gushing over this town as if it's my new school-girl crush*??


After the weekend vacationers had driven back to their subsequent Minnesota and Wisconsin homes, my mother and I drove the hour-long trek to Ely on Tuesday. We got going around noon, as she wanted to attend a seminar that began at two. Since I clearly did not want to waste a day in Ely at said seminar, I opted to spend my two hours at the International Wolf Center. 


I'm not sure which precluded which - my love for wolves led to my love of the wolf center, or my many visits to the wolf center as a youth affected my views of wolves - but either way I love wolves. I would go back to college and get a BS, MS and PhD in Animal Science if it meant I could surround myself forever with wild and captured wolves. In any case, I went through the exhibits, etc etc, but then just sat by the windows and watched the four wolves that they've raised at the center. Fortunately, it was a cool day, so the wolves were fairly active, and I was just completely rapt in watching them. And taking photos of them, of course. Overall, the day was wonderful. And although I should head off now to sleep, I'm going to spend my late night looking up info on graduate classes. Ah, vacation!!

-K

*Okay, maybe not. Only room for one at a time. Hrm.

Happy fourth!

Today is a lazy lake day.

After all the excitement of the picnic yesterday, today's rain storms and overall humidity have made it a very quiet Fourth of July. Not that my family really does anything special for the Fourth, but I wouldn't know that today were a holiday if my calendar didn't tell me so. My brother is off visiting with a best friend from college, whose family often summers here after living the rest of the year in Alaska, but my mother and I have basically just spent the entire day napping. Even my cat knew it was a lazy day. See? This is his 'get the hell away from me, I'm sleeping' face.

And it just began to rain again.

The rains here are beautiful, somewhat different than the cold spring rains or the intense thunderstorms of the East Coast. They are often warm rains, and though they can harbor ferocious winds and strong downfalls, they seem to bring a new life to the surrounding meadows and lake, in a way that cosmopolitan suburbia can't accept. If you can imagine a rainforest, where the rain smells as soft and welcoming as it feels on your skin, then you get the idea of what it's like here.

But in between naps, today has been a day of accomplishment. Instead of lounging by the lake and reading for the bulk of the day, I finally got out my sewing machine to work on a long overdue project. I didn't actually get to sewing anything, but I did some pinning on darts and pleats, so that the minute I plug in my Singer, I can zip along quite nicely. And though I'm taking a break to blog now, I've been stewing over the outline to my Peace Corps application essays.

Tonight will be another night of playing cards with my maman, brother, gramma and aunt, and tomorrow we'll start it all over again. It just won't be the Fourth of July anymore.

-K

Swimming! Finally!

The last few days have been nothing short of perfect lake days. The weather, although often chilly in the morning, succumbs to a luscious blue sky and warm sun by the afternoon, when it really counts anyway. My eldest brother Soren arrived here yesterday from the Twin Cities, and this morning he and I went into Virginia, (the 'big' town, where the nearest Target is a nifty drive of 40 minutes from the cabin.) After buying some more supplies for our brand spanking new sauna and running a couple other errands, we arrived back at the cabin to get ready for this afternoon's picnic.

Marvilion, along with four other cabins belonging to my extended family and about 10 other cabins, is located on a dirt road named after the my Great Aunt's family, who originally homesteaded the land. But there are only 8 or 9 cabins at the end of the road, located on a peninsula that separates a little bay from the big one, and those cabins make up 'the point.' For the past 40 years or so, the point has always had a picnic for the fourth, and this year was no different. 

Though I didn't know most of the attendees, the picnic was speckled with toe-head blondes of all ages who are, you guessed it, my Oh-So-Scandinavian cousins. My second cousins and all their kids, to be exact. Although my second cousins are my generation, they're all in the forties and fifties, and their kids range from elementary school age to just entering college. It was nice to visit with many of them, but after devouring food and taking in some of the bright sun, I was ready to jump into the lake.

 This is my really unhappy face, because I know how inevitably cold the water is about to be. meep.

So I got in the water, and it was pretty wonderful. Most of our shore is quite rocky, which is no problem once you get out into the water, but our poor (stupid) dog really wanted to come out on the rocks with us...not on the dock, on the rocks.
It made for an adorable photo, but she struggled. A lot.

Despite Venus looming just feet away, a large family of mergansers swam not far from us, the little ducklings diving and popping up just feet from us, which only accentuated the cliche lake day that it was... But the important thing is that I went swimming in the lake. finally.

We have our priorities straight

I was speaking to my cousin earlier today, and he was more than surprised to see me online. I explained to him that my mom had installed DSL at our cabin a few summers ago. Then, thoughtfully, I added that we still don't have plumbing, but we have DSL. Because we have our priorities straight. Duh.

There are probably some cons to having internet here, as I am just as capable as wasting my time online here as I am at home, but it's really nice to still have some connection to the world. Plus, this way, I can share all my exploits with you!! And today's exploits are...drum roll please...photos!! I finally got my pictures from off my camera and onto my laptop, so you can actually see some of the experiences I'm so pitifully trying to share with words. So without much ado, enjoy some of the sights here at Marvilion!

The cabin when we first arrived, from the driveway

The view of the lake from the front of the cabin...

Up and running!

Well, I have arrived at my cabin, and the internets is finally up and running, ergo so is this little blog of mine. I haven't spent a full summer here at my cabin since I was 14 or so, so I really wanted to document this experience, as I don't know if I'll have another one quite like it.

My cabin, located on Lake Vermilion, is located about 4.5 hours North of the Twin Cities and about 30 miles South of the Canadian border as the bird flies. About twenty minutes away is the closest town, Cook. At just over 600 people, Main St. looks like an image straight out of Northern Exposure. The cabin itself is something else. Located on 24 lakeside acres, the 1930s cottage was built by my Great Uncle and Great Aunt, who sold the place to my mom in 1992. Since attaining the 2 bedroom, kitchen, dining room and porch laden building, we have added electricity and internet, but maintain a plumbing-free and television-free lifestyle. It's a pretty amazing place, but not meant for mainstream America.

The trip itself was absolutely perfect this year. We finally hit the road at 5pm on Monday, and though my mom encountered a bit of rain on the Ohio Turnpike around 9 that evening, the drive was smooth. Fittingly, I took over the drive just after we entered Indiana at 3am, and took us as far as the Wisconsin Dells, where we stopped for breakfast at 9am Tuesday. We finally got to our cabin around 6pm Tuesday and as the van trampled over the overgrown drive way we saw - what is that?? - a dead tree, strewn across the drive. Well crap. So being the tough chicks that we fortunately are, my mom and I moved the whole damn tree so that it was parallel to the driveway. Fun. Finally, we cover the last 100 meters of our driveway, have our cabin in sight, and my mom gasps.

She doesn't have the keys.

I can't even make this stuff up. The worst part is, I absolutely knew she had forgotten them. I had thought to ask her sometime in the middle of Pennsylvania the night before, yet had avoided it because I was afraid the inevitable answer would be what ended up the case.

Well, no worries. My gramma, whose cabin is located half a mile down the road, has a spare key. So we drive over to her place, but when we arrive and explain the situation, she states that no, she doesn't have a key to Marvilion, (our cabin,) anymore. However, my Aunt Camille, who is staying with my gramma for a short vacation, is a handywoman if ever there was one, so she goes with us back to the cabin and is able to cut out a window pane so I can open a window, climb through it, and unlock us. I'm just glad that we arrived at our cabin at a reasonable hour, while there was still light in the sky.

I've been shooting some fun photos thus far, but my camera itself doesn't wanna connect to the computer, so as soon as I have luck with that I will have many, many, many photos of the summer's exploits! :)

-K