Returned from up north just yesterday, babysit this week, and then go back up north for an extended Sat-Mon weekend.

I love northern Wisconsin. Honestly, there are times when all I want to do is rid myself of this crazy state and its stereotypes, but when my family takes the 2 hour drive up there, I immediately cannot imagine living anywhere different.

'Up north' is an alias for 'My grandparent's cottage' which is another alias for 'a trailer on a plot of land by a beautiful small lake.' My grandma and grandpa have owned the 'cottage' long enough that my mom and her sister spent summers up there as a kid. Needless to say, the environment is one where everybody knows everybody and the people you don't know are deemed as 'mysterious.'

The first thing I do when my family pulls in the gravel drive, before unpacking my overstuffed bag, is go down on the dock in front of the cottage and just take in the scene.

I often peer down first, this lake in spite of all the other polluted ones remains untouched by the wasteproducts of humanity, so when I say 'peer down' I mean looking straight to the bottom of the lake, the water is that clear. If I'm lucky I'll see a school of minnows or another kind of fish, most commonly bluegill, perch, or sunfish, and rarely a bass. All of my fish knowledge stems from my grandfather's fishing obsession. He fishes all year round, everyday, but in the summer on the small lake up north is when he gets his biggest catches. Growing up, I, along with my brother and sister, would be awoken by grandpa around 4 am to go out and fish. We would come back around 8 am with an average of 30 perch, then eat breakfast, go out and fish again and catch around 30 more. With age, however, comes my love of sleep and pair that with an inability to take a fish off a hook and there's no question why my fishing days are over, if not numbered.

Time seems to stand still up there. I remark this because nothing ever changes. While my grandpa goes fishing with the kids in the morning, the rest of us 'womenfolk' prepare a hearty breakfast of 'dippy' eggs, toast, and orange juice. My grandma fusses over doing the dishes and my sister and I halfheartedly agree to doing the chore. After lunch, my grandpa takes a nap on the screened in porch while everybody else goes about doing what they please, for my brother and sister this includes jet skiiing and tubing, for me its reading. Up north is the perfect place to read, no television or great technological displays to distract me, just the sound of the lake, the boats, and the birds, and more often than not I end up dozing off next the grandpa.

Going up north every summer reminds me of the utter simplicity of living, and cannot help but hope that the cottage will be passed down from generation to generation so that one day I will be able to show my children the natural beauties of life.