madeline

Tomorrow we leave for Madeline Island.  We're going to stay for a week.  We have a cottage right on the lake with our own private beach.

There are actually 11 other islands near Madeline, but they're pretty tiny.

Our family loves traditions. Especially my mom.  Madeline Island is one of our traditions.  For several years in a row, we would go and stay on the island for a week during the summer.

We've also done shorter trips to Bayfield and just gone over to Madeline for a day visit.

I have so many memories of our time there.  Really happy memories. I wanted to write a whole bunch of little stories about my memories, but I ended up only writing one and even though it doesn't seem like the happiest memory, it is dear to me.

This is about a year we stayed in Whitefish Cottage.  I think I was going to be a sophomore or junior in high school.

The cottage we stayed in had stacks of old quilts in the closets.  I would pile 3 of these quilts in my arms, along with a book, pen, journal, and water bottle and make my way across the street to the beach. 

The sun would occasionally peek out brightly from behind the clouds, but mostly the sky was gray on this unusually chilly week in June. 

With one quilt I would make a bed in the sand, and then I wrapped the others around myself to act as a shield from the wind blowing off Lake Superior.

Sometimes I would write, sometimes read, but mostly, I drifted in and out of sleep as I lay on my stomach, my head turned so my eyes were parallel with the horizon.  The steady ebb and flow of the lake tide calmed me and grounded me. 

That year, grief had made me lose touch with the world around me and with my body itself.  Laying so close to the earth made me feel connected to something again.  I didn’t quite feel at peace in my heart, but I was starting to understand what peace was again. 

I lay there for hours day after day.  I didn’t really want to do anything else.  Things made sense in that place.  I didn’t remember how to pray, but the lake seemed to write the prayer for me. 

Years later, I still remember my place on the beach, as the most comforting, peaceful place there is.