We live here now in part because of a fish. I suppose my being bitten by the Northwoods bug at age 8 had something to do with it, as did 25 years of vacationing on this lake with our kids. But it was a largemouth bass that sealed the deal, that and some cosmic forces.
It was early August 2009, a Friday, the last day of our week's stay at Jung's Cottages here on Birch Lake near Harshaw, Wis. It was a warm, still grey afternoon, ideal for fishing. I climbed into the boat and leisurely motored straight across the lake. There, on shore, partly hidden by rushes (I call them "pencil reeds") stood a for sale sign.
Over the years Noelle and I had made it a practice, once during each week's Birch Lake vacation, to circle the lake in the boat and see what properties were for sale. In the early years of course we had no money to speak of and were merely window-shopping. As time went by, prices kept escalating, and so kept the dream of a lake cabin elusive. In recent years, though we had thought seriously about buying. We had even visited a couple of Birch Lake properties with a real estate agent and had debated purchasing a lot with a very small, quite run-down red cabin on it. But it was on the wrong end of the lake, was flanked by other run-down places, and seemed too expensive, the cabin essentially a tear-down, thus with negative value.
Around the same time, this lot with pencil reeds in front was available. It was heavily wooded with red oak, hemlock and a few majestic white pines. The top of its steep slope would afford a great panoramic view of the water. It had been for sale for a couple of years, at a price beyond our reach, but by August 2009, the asking price had come down by some $40,000 -- in other words, from "Are you kidding?" to "reasonable."
So, here I was, carrying years of wishing and hoping, on the last day of vacation, in pain at the prospect of leaving for home, floating beside this lot with its blue-and-white for sale sign. All right, I said to myself. If I catch a fish in front of this for sale sign, then we are destined to buy this property. I picked up a rod outfitted with a black-and-gold jointed Rapala floating plug and launched a cast that landed just where I had aimed it, right up against the edge of the pencil reeds. I twitched the bait a couple of times and...BAM! Just like that I was hooked into a bass. It turned to be a 19-inch largemouth, extremely well fed, beautifully colored with its black lateral stripe on deep green, a fish almost suitable for mounting if I'd been so inclined.
I slipped the bass back into the water unharmed, headed back to the cabin and told Noelle what had happened. We agreed that destiny had just called. A month later, in the full-color splendor of late September, we were back with the real estate agent, walking the site. The real estate slump had brought the price within reach. My business and my income had come through the great recession unscathed. We had the money. Circumstances had conspired. Three months later we sat around a table at a bank office in Minocqua and signed the papers.
The following April we parked a camper trailer on the land. That June we had a well and septic system installed. In April 2011 we held a ground-breaking, in a snowstorm, with our two kids and their significant others. By September we had our cabin -- in reality a small lake home, perfectly suited for year-round habitation. And so, in July 2013, here we are, full-time Northwoods dwellers.
And somewhere in Birch Lake, there swims a very expensive fish.
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