This place, this place is one of my favorites. Nobody knows where it is and where I go. The drive down the steep muck filled driveway prolongs what I've been waiting for the past sixteen hours in the car sharing the back seat with my eighty-six pounds, ripe smelling, and twelve year old golden retriever. My feelings filled with reluctant ways as I make my first step out of the car and the crunch of gravel below my feet is filled with relief. The steps I take up the ramp towards the blue-grey house I've seen so many times is welcomed by the big smile I receive from Great Uncle Dale. The name better known as Uncle Bear with a voice so booming and his great towering height not likely seen of the eighty year old man he appears as, still with a head full of long grey hair.

The chilled breath fogs up behind me and not before me because it cannot keep up with me as I race down the pebbled path towards my secret hideaway. I can hear it before my eyes lay on it; waves crashing up against boulders, not rocks, intimidating those who meet eyes with it. The glance I take outward at the never altering scene is compared to a first glance every time.

Sitting up on top of the boulder in my usual spot can be compared to as Simba sitting on pride rock looking out at what he loves and what I love is what I'm looking at; the never ending, ever changing, angry lake. This water filled mass is not just filled with frigid waters but it hears the untold secrets. The surrounding evergreens watch the memories being made, and the rocks below hold the families that sit upon them.

The innocence of children makes leaps and bounds from boulder to boulder as Mother Nature's breath nearly knocks them into the hypothermic waters. The waters could be as docile as a puppy in a goose down blanket but in a split second it could engulf the adolescence innocence and wash them away like chalk drawings in the rain.
They say that watching the sunrise at the Grand Canyon is like watching your first sunrise but taking in a breath of the cold air is like an infant's first breath of Superior pure air. Witnessing the sun fall to the end of the earth and rise back up in the fog engulfed morning is as close to heaven as you can get.

We all have secret hideaways and mine is most obviously one of the great lakes. I look forward every year to see the fresh waters, smell the evergreen pine smell, witness the most powerful and unforgiving waves and remember memories that cannot be abolished.