I miss...From Sally Behr Schendel

Today is the first day of school and the yellow bus just rumbled past our house, and I am missing Desbarats...coffee on the dock at Whippoorwill Point with Art Maitland as he picked up sacks of garbage; hiking up Trap Rock and thinking it was the top of the world with Mom and D. I miss waving good-bye to Tim and Barb Gjos as the sun sets and the moose antlers on his pontoon boat poke out to either side of the bow as they head back over to Portlock. I miss measuring how the sun rise is swinging farther to the south in early fall , while we are up in the Wilson Channel at Matotee, until finally I can watch the actual sun rise if I go out to the end of the dock, and the sun is rising right over the family camp at Whippoorwill Point on Dawson Island! Indelible images: the bear swimming from Trap Rock Island to Dawson; the bear crossing the Black Hole canyon while Carey, Becky and I stopped paddling (I think I stopped breathing); the jangling sound of the rigging from the boats tied up at the marina docks, bobbing and shifting with the waves, when we’d pull in from our three day drive, often after dark. And saying good night to the lake, paddling my kayak home from DeeDee’s through the cut between Portlock and Dawson, the sunset so brilliant I can hardly see anything but that red….