Illinois used to be a lot further away from northern Wisconsin than it is today.

“Consider the roads,” Charles began. “Today’s expressways were once two-lane highways, winding, hilly, without shoulders, and dotted with myriad small towns sporting at least one stop sign to slow you down. When your parents first went north, it was a pioneer’s journey. Going to visit them required good tires, time, and patience with the kiddos.”

Life stories begin before we are born. This particular family tale involved a tornado, sweeping over a peninsula that stretched into Lake Julia. Originally, the land had been inhabited by the Potawatomi before the Civil War, the railroads, the lumberjacks, and then, the settlers. In 1951, a palisade log cabin existed on the Point when the winds blew, bringing down trees, impeding access. When my father and his seminary buddy, Ed, volunteered to help clean-up, it is unlikely they were thinking five generations out.

They partnered to buy 51 acres, likely without much input from their young wives. It wasn’t until Mom was in her 90s that I asked for her side of the adventure. 

“Well,” she exclaimed without hesitation, “The place was just horrid! The road went deeper and deeper into the woods, further away from civilization. You kids were just toddlers! His mother cried and cried. She thought he had lost his marbles!”

I arrived at the Point Cabin as a babe in arms, having my toes dipped into the shallows along the shore by my parents, being held tightly in the fishing boat and bathed in a basin filled with pumped and heated water. I was too young to pick up the nuances of the participating adults. Photos show horses pulling logs, Grandpa holding up stringers of panfish, snapping turtles before they became soup, and my new brother, Stevie, napping in the wood box turned cradle.

The Heart of My Soul begins with snippets from my father’s letters to Ed when they divided the land. Money was more than scarce. In one letter, Dad wrote, “The insurance for the year is around $8.00 and I am hoping you can send me your half before it comes due.” His journals recounted refinished doors discarded by a church camp, seconds on lumber, and stretching his $3,000 annual pastor’s salary to cover it all.

The Heart of My Soul is not only a saga of buildings and land but of hikers, cooks, fisher-folks, hunters and often, humans seeking peace and solace in times of grief and life changes. The cabin is a shell. People are its spirit.

Wilma, my “spinster” aunt, finally got to see her bear. My brother, Steven, went from searching swamps for tadpoles and creeks for suckers, to buying tropical fish on business trips to the Bahamas. Greg and his grandpa Don spent hours watching bobbers dip under the waves, but he was with me when we caught that muskie with our bare hands. Despite my best intentions to be a good role model at Girl’s Camp, we all ended up screaming in our “Creepy” kayaks.

Five generations. From babies to grandparents, the guest book registered comments and the journals noted everything from muskies, to weddings, to the dawn of electricity. The pages record new arrivals and disappearance of those no longer with us.

 “Yes,” Charles added, “Carol and I honeymooned at the cabin. Over the years, we took our kids. We thought your folks were going to move there after retirement, so we started to look for a place of our own. We had the downpayment for the Point in hand, when Ed, or his realtor, got the idea to raise the price a second time. We couldn’t afford it.”

This summer, I met his daughter, Cala, the other little girl who had slept in my twin bed, lounged on the window seat and jumped off the same dock. She told me that her brothers used to lob golf balls off that pier, across the lake toward grass island, then attempt underwater retrieval. Are you kidding me? Another cabin story. A full circle story from our mothers’ friendship to us.

The Heart of My Soul. Join me. Meet my family. Cherish stories. Recognize your own and pass them along. And, above all, save the wild places for the next generation.