Home

I have been doing a lot of contemplating lately about what makes a home, home.
I grew up just a few miles from where I live now, and St. Paul and its metro area will always be home for me, no matter where I may go. (Probably nowhere permanently because I'm such a fraidy-cat).

This weekend, I went to one of my homes. I took a road trip with my husband and brother-in-law, four and a half hours north, to a cabin that resides quietly near at the Canadian border. It's near a few towns you've never heard of. The mosquitoes take steroids. A local bar names the geographic location as "where the pavement ends and the north begins." I can't make this stuff up.

The nights become so pitch black you can see the swirls and whorls of the Milky Way, actual milky, sparkly spindles that wind through the sky. Everything smells like pine and clean water and gravel road. When I was young, we got one radio station. It was old country, interspersed with Achy Breaky Heart, and promptly at 9 p.m., you lost reception. It didn't matter if it was mid-song. We got one tv station. Usually it showed Sesame Street in the afternoons. I read a lot of books.

It was there I learned to fish, and I learned the difference between rock bass, sunfish, walleye, crappies, northerns, and perch. I saw a rainbow end in my front yard. I saw an eagle teach her babies to fly. A snake slithered over my foot in the outhouse—indoor plumbing is a fairly new addition to our outpost. I can be fully immersed in 70-degree water in less than a minute and after some initial screaming, enjoy it.

I have convinced wild ducks to eat out of my hand. Come to think of it, I saw ducks immediately after birth, pushed out of their duck house to find the lake. I had a bear amble by the living room window. I have seen fawns frolic with their mom. I've danced in a bar to the live tunes of Johnny Cash's former guitarist. I learned to drive a three wheeler.

I've learned about respecting the environment and seen the effects of what happens when you don't. I've become protective of that environment.

I've learned a lot of life lessons and I've gotten to know my parents and my siblings in ways I don't think I would have, had we always stayed in the city. We play games together at the cabin. We watch less TV and fish together. We tell stories from a long time ago. Those are treasured bits of my family history.

I have eaten a lot of appetizers, enjoyed a lot of cocktail hours, swam in a lot of cold water, and screamed at bugs and other slithery and slimy critters. I've itched a lot of bites. I've listened to wicked raindrops cascade onto a tin roof, and done nothing else because we're out of power.

I've spent a lot of time in awe, in total wonder, at how something so beautiful has become a part of me. Trees like old friends. The massive unpredictability of weather that makes a good day feel like winning the lottery.

Just yesterday, I woke up, threw on some day clothes, brushed my teeth, and headed out on the boat with my dad and brother-in-law and husband. We fished for three-ish hours, carrying in quite a few sunnies. My dad filleted them immediately afterward. We donned our suits and our brave faces and waded into the water. We floated on noodles and bobbed with waves and rinsed off. My sister and niece sat in the lounge chairs, shiny from sunscreen, and giggled at my screaming at the cold water. But, I promise, it really is refreshing once you get in.

We ate tacos for dinner and packed sunny filets in our cooler. We packed up reluctantly, bid everyone farewell. As the dust kicked up under our wheels, I thought about how I felt like I was driving away from home to go home. Behind this urban-girl veneer is a country girl.