Home --- back to the AC, TV and the internet....

Yesterday at this time I was having afternoon tea in the solarium. It was a warmish day, so the tea was iced. We had cucumber sandwiches, scones and some sweet things. All very civilized. We'd spent the morning walking slowly down the shore, hubby skipping rocks and me trying to learn how to skip them (a boy thing, I've concluded).

After tea I took my book outside to sit in a red adorondac chair in the shade and read while worshiping the BIg Lake.

There is something magical about the Big Lake -- the special color blue it owns and merely rents to other bodies of water. The way the sky and lake blend at the horizon and the way my favorite of its shores are made up of smooth stones, pebbles and rocks of a variety of rusty reds, browns and grays. My fascination with the Big Lake goes way back.

As a 6 year-old I was rather well-traveled. I'd seen the Gulf of Mexico several times and understood the concept of salt water and not being able to see the other side of that kind of body of water. Dad had showed me maps, so I understood...
I grew up on a lake -- a smallish bay of a bigger lake conneccted by a channel to other bays. In my 6 year-old's mind, I defined "lake" as 'a non-river body of water you can operate a boat on and that you can see the other shore of' --- (even then I was being a philosopher, me and my precise defiintions...)... an 'ocean' is salty and you can't see the other side.

That was until I saw the Big Lake for the first time. The Big Lake is often called an inland sea -- and for good reason. Standing on the shore you expreience it as you do an ocean. A rather calm and very cold ocean. The Big Lake has tides and a smell and sounds of its own. Even on the hottest days, down by the Big Lake you can get cool.

I'm not sure if I love the Big Lake more in the summer or winter. Summer it is more accessible, but that is also when everyone else wants to love it too. In the winter it turns a steely-blue color and only freezes in the coldest of winters. It also has amazing storms which have a beauty all their own. In the winter the Big Lake is all mine --

We booked a couple of nights at the lodge in late December. We'll take a couple of TV and internet-less days up there... in a queen sized bed --- and then probably spend a couple of more nights in the area in a more modern and cushy hotel... I can't wait. We'll need it after our first semester separated.

Although I forgot to get photos of the amazing lodge dining room, I got some other good ones I'll post later.