ON OUR FAWN ISLAND, near the Canadian border on Rainy Lake, there is a 30 foot cliff face.
ON OUR FAWN ISLAND, near the Canadian border on Rainy Lake, there is a 30 foot cliff face. From which grow bearberry and harebells and junipers. I love the spot and have long referred to it as Moonlight Ledge—for it is a fine observatory from which to watch the ascending moon, or falling stars, or the northern lights. It is also an excellent post from which to see, through the lens of history, the flash of red-tipped Voyageur paddles and the procession of bark canoes—up this Voyageurs Highway to their outposts in the high north—and to hear the echoes of their old chansons.
We long had a fine bench here, made from a huge chunk of lightning-split white pine driftwood—which son Bryan and I carried here 33 years ago. It served its function well and faithfully, but lately it was really not safe to sit on, as it split and crumbled and rotted away. So imagine my surprise when, this afternoon, the whole family drug me out to Moonlight Ledge, there to present me with a belated Father’s Day gift. About which I had no inkling.
This grand bench—this extraordinary bench—was designed and made primarily by son-in-law Ryan, a master craftsman, with the rest of the family in on the secret. Made from cedar, naturally stained, built to withstand earthquakes and cyclones, it sits firmly where the old bench sat. And invites one to view moonrises. And sunrises. And northern lights and shooting stars. And to listen to the wind in the pines and the waves upon the rocks. All important parts of my Northwoods life.
And I cannot imagine a better gift.