Lying back on a hammock and patio chairs, the four of us stare up at a sky perforated with light. The Big Dipper. The North Star. Jupiter. Cassieopia. And across the top, like a hazy cummerbund, the Milky Way.
It's the last night of August, the middle night of the Labor Day weekend. We're on the dock at the cabin of friends on Burntside Lake near Ely. We are spanking clean from the sauna and subsequent plunges in the lake. The night is soft and warm. A gentle breeze sweeps across our bare arms and legs. Now we simply lie back, beholding the wonder and mystery of the galaxy, announcing each shooting star.
Three Labs -- two blacks and a yellow -- click toenails on the cedar planks, moving from one of us to another, seeking love. Or at least an ear rub.
Perhaps there is a heaven. I am not sure about that. All I know is that life here on Earth does not get much sweeter than this. Old friends. Cabin lights winking yellow across the lake. The black treeline of wise old pines.
The cabin days are as good as the cabin nights. Eagles carve circles against the sky. A hen mallard wings past the dock at eye level. And, most improbably, a chickadee lands on my friend's hand while it's draped over his knee.
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A couple of us paddle kayaks about 10 miles one afternoon in lively seas. A couple of us specialize in dock talk. The smell of woodsmoke drifts out of the log sauna and over the dock until finally we can wait no longer. It's about 10 steps from the sauna to the end of the dock, where we hurl our beet-red bodies into the night air and wait for the lake to rise up and meet us.
People elsewhere might wonder why we live up here. How we endure the bitter winters. Why we put up with blackflies and mosquitoes. Why we don't just get out of here to someplace where it's always warm.
They don't understand that we aren't after consistency. We are after contrast. We love the sound of dry snow crunching underfoot in February and the call of a whitethroat on a June morning. We value the thunder of a lake making ice on a December night and the sound of waves kissing a piece of Canadian Shield in July. We like the way the heat rolls around from the woodstove to the top bench of the sauna, and we're just as eager for the cool plunge into the waiting lake.
Somewhere out there, loons idle. Mallards sleep. The osprey chicks in the nest just down the bay snuggle down in their basket of sticks.
There are a lot of good places to live in this world. Places with tropical birds and coral reefs and endless beaches. Places with caribou herds and kangaroos and roseate spoonbills.
But here on the dock under a million nightlights, northern Minnesota has never felt more right.
SAM COOK is a Duluth News Tribune columnist and outdoors writer. Reach him at (218) 723-5332 or scook@duluthnews.com .
