All summer I’ve been on hiatus from writing on IOTN. When I started, I had set the minimum goal for myself of posting once a month. I kept with that for over a year and a half, which was pretty cool. While there were plenty of excuses for me to point to since my last post, I think the biggest hurdle for me was the question of how much of myself to put out onto IOTN. I’ll post more about the opposite side of sharing, but the big event that both took up my time blocked my writing was that we bought a cabin in Northern Wisconsin. This is a realization of a dream that I’ve had since I was a youth, and a shared goal that my wife and I have had since before we were married.
Now this was a huge commitment on our part, and one that we did not come about lightly, but my wife convinced me that if we were going to do this, that doing it while our boys were still young and that we could make this a part of their upbringing made now the time to do it.
As a kid I remember roaming for miles and miles from my uncle’s farm without care. We would hunt, hike, camp. My great grandfather had settled in the area from Prague almost 100 years earlier and with my father growing up in the area and my uncles still living there, our family knew most of the landowners, and any others we would either pass without notice or without care. On a couple of occasions we hiked the six miles between by uncles’ houses along the Blue River. But through my teens, more and more of the farms were sold and posted and I felt my world get smaller. This had a profound impact on me as I thought, if other people can be buying up this land for their sole enjoyment, I should be able to as well.
I remember back in my early 20’s, shortly after undergrad, a friend was stopping through Madison and we met for a beer. She asked me, “When will you know you have Made It?”
I asked her what she meant, and she clarified, “What luxury out there will it be a personal and professional accomplishment to be able to purchase?”
Without hesitation, I said, “Owning land with woods.”
I remember her puzzled look, “Not a BMW, an Audi, or a big house?”
“No.”
“Well, to each their own, I guess,” she replied.
So with the prodding of my wife, i achieved a long-held personal goal. It is strange to say that, and an event like this was hard to share, and difficult to find the right framing and voice to surround it. But now that we are getting more settled, it is easier for me to take it all in, reflect, and write. This also gives some context to my previous “Where Do We Go Now” series because as we were property searching and investigating the property that we eventually bought, I became very familiar with the available GIS mapping resources.
We found a property with lake and forest and something for everyone. While there is plenty of work to be done, we will be able to make it our own, with our boys to help along the way. Admittedly, it is a drive, being nearly to the Upper Peninsula, which is a haul from Milwaukee. But honestly I don’t mind the drive at all and the boys are getting used to it. We’ve spent nearly every other weekend up there all summer, combine that with the myriad of other things going on in life and I found to be difficult, but I’m now able to get back to writing, and maybe with sharing a bit more of myself.