A place:

I think everyone needs a place: a place that reduces life to its essence and helps a person think clearly. I’ve found mine in an old--almost spooky if you let your mind go there--hotel on Lake Superior in Ashland, WI. It’s the Chequamegon Hotel. I love it most when the town and the hotel are deserted in the winter. There is something hauntingly beautiful about Lake Superior, anytime, but especially in the winter, and especially from a deep leather couch near the fireplace and a big wall of windows over-looking the lake. I am yearning for that seat today. I would welcome the opportunity to walk the frozen beach and stare into the cold, big lake, and feel insignificant. To reflect on a rounded smooth stone and think of its history and compare that to my own—to realize mine seems pretty unimportant, in the big scheme of things.  Sometimes a person just needs to see the contrast to get perspective.

I was there a month or so ago. I’m pretty sure I was the only one in the entire hotel, which when I first experienced it several years ago kind of freaked me out, but now I treasure the experience. I took a great book, recently given to me as a parting gift before my summer friend went back to her real non-summer life (Thank you Karen. I love the book completely!) It’s a wonderful book, titled A Gift from the Sea, but you have to read it slowly. That’s the point of the book: to slow the pulse, to make you look, really look, at the core of a situation.

I spent that day last month alternating reading by the fireplace and going for walks on the frozen beach where the massive amounts of drift wood were piled, frozen as if it were a strange and beautiful piece of abstract art. The lake was frozen at its edges, but I could make out one deep pocket of sea glass, broken pottery, and bits of collected treasures the great lake offered back. I tried to dig them out through the ice, but after several attempts I took my wet cold feet back to the fire. The treasure will stay there until the thaw, when, if I’m lucky, I’ll be waiting to accept the gift.