MAY 3, 2025 –
THE PADDLEBOAT
(Cont.) Wednesday at noon, I told Jeff we’d need to start packing up no later than three o’clock. The plan was to arrive home in time for a late supper, visit with Beth and my sister Jenny for a while, then retire by ten or eleven o’clock. We’d set our alarms for 4:45 a.m. and be on the way to the airport 15 minutes later for Jeff’s return to Boston. Departures from the cabin, however, are never on time. “No later than . . .” means at least a half hour beyond the specified time. So it was on this occasion.
Our planned afternoon project was to design and construct on the fly, a six-foot-long ramp to bridge the gap between the top of the cutout in the berm in front of the Red Cabin, and the first section of the newly installed main dock, a vertical drop of about a foot.
In the scheme of things, this was not an overly challenging project. I had to pick through my on-site lumber supply to see what I had to work with, then construct in my mind just how the pieces should be assembled. I wanted to minimize the number of cuts I’d need to make. It all came together quite fast, and I was pleased with the outcome, though I still need to add cleats to the ramp to prevent any slipping and sliding by anyone who uses it. Jeff’s assistance cut the work time in half.
I checked the time and saw that it was now a bit past three o’clock, the appointed hour to begin organizing for the trip home. Just then, however, Jeff had found his way to the clutter riot in the area where my old sailboat is parked. He expressed disapproval of the way I’ve run the boat into the ground. It’s a Catalina 14.2 Capri—a great day boat for Grindstone Lake, which covers 3100 acres but has very little boat traffic, making the lake ideal sailing. My boat, however, is now 34 years old and requires a fair amount of rigmarole to . . . well, rig. Plus, in the spring the boat and its lift need to be dragged into the lake and back out in the fall. Over the past decade, the sailboat has fallen into disuse. Now covered with leaves and lichen, the boat is serviceable but looks as though it came from one of the “plein-air big item thrift stores” in Hayward.
To appease Jeff, I cleared some of the debris from the deck and benches of the boat. Before I could finish, however, he’d moved on to our old paddleboat. This oldest member of our fleet was acquired back when our sons were just old enough for their feet to reach the pedals. They weren’t able to paddle long or far, and bulked up in their round-the-neck life preservers, the two brothers cut an amusing image as they took turns steering around in circles thirty feet offshore. But those days now belong to years long past. As happens to all things and many people, the paddleboat grew old and far more familiar with land than water. Each year it wound up being stored farther and farther from the break in the berm where the rest of the fleet of canoes, kayaks, sailboat and eventually, pontoon gained access to the inland sea. In time, leaves and fallen branches camouflaged the overturned paddleboat almost entirely from view.
Eventually the old vessel went the way of the face-to-face glider swing that came with the property—the swing I remember distinctly from my early childhood, when our grandmother would lead my sisters and me on a hike down the shoreline path from the old family cabin at the east end of Björnholm to “Gorud’s”—the secluded lot adjoining the far of Björnholm and where the Red Cabin now sits—adjacent to the west end of Björnholm. From the late 1940s, a simple one-room log cabin painted red with white trim occupied the Gorud’s lot. It had been built as a day cabin and was owned by “Gorud,” a Norwegian immigrant who lived in nearby Hayward.
No one was ever on hand when we reached the place, so upon reaching our destination, the well-established routine was to take a trip on the swing. At least that’s how I thought of it—a conveyance that would whisk us to some far off land with the main attraction being the imaginary scenery along the way. The swing was parked in front of the cabin but much closer to the shore than to the dwelling.
One of our “trips” aboard the swing formed a particularly distinctive memory for me. I was sitting next to our grandmother on the lakeside of the seat facing west. I was only four, so my feet didn’t yet reach the metal deck under the seats. As my grandmother gently pressed her feet against that small gliding platform to provide our locomotion, my eyes settled on the motion of the swinging vertical bars that attached the platform to the overhead metal frame. I remember the lower portion of the bars brushing the very lowest boughs of a young white pine—about as tall as me at the time—with each pass of the swing.
Dad told me that “Gorud,” a blacksmith and welder by trade, had made the swing himself. It was painted silver and had been a fixture, an indelible symbol of those idyllic walks with our grandmother. Otherwise always at work in the kitchen or cabin housekeeping, she seemed most relaxed and content while hiking along the path to “Gorud’s,” and aboard that swing was about the only time I observed her doing absolutely nothing except visiting with us, often describing scenes in Sweden from her own childhood.
Decades later, my wife and I acquired the Gorud lot. We razed the old (red) cabin to build the (new) Red Cabin, though we incorporated old materials—split rocks from the old fireplace; rafter poles and roofing boards; the back door and casement windows; an exterior light fixture; the red-painted concrete floor (broken up into pieces for our front patio)—into the new construction.
The swing, now a symbol of the faded past, got moved around until it was fully out of the way, where it was then spray painted dark green for maximum camouflage effect. Years of harsh weather and layers of lichen naturally camouflaged the wooden slats of the seats. The top of the frame was “repurposed” as a resting place for the sailboat mast.[1]
And that white pine tree the size of me? It now towers over its retinue of “lesser” arbors, a landmark visible far out on the lake.
I admire the tree every single time I lay eyes on it, which is every time I look out the front windows of the Red Cabin or step outside from the side porch and face the lake. The swing, better hidden by time than by its weathered seats or green paint—at least at this time of year before the backdrop of foliage is in full bloom—has long become invisible to me.
But to Jeff, a first-time visitor and highly observant (not to mention honest) one at that, the swing was an unwelcome visual intrusion. “Eric!” he said, as he stepped toward it. I knew what was coming. “What in the hell is this doing here? Why would you just leave this piece of junk standing right here? Can’t you get rid of it?” With that he began inspecting it to see how it could be broken down for easier removal.
His sharp reaction triggered a memory flash, but not a sentimental one in which my grandmother appeared. What I recalled was the large garden tiller that our neighbor Bill Caine across the street back in Anoka, Minnesota had abandoned in the very front of his lot. The Caine’s large lot ran from the Mississippi River in the back of their house all the way up to Rice Street. They had a choice view of the river in their backyard, but their front yard, as it were, was a veritable junk lot.
One early summer day Bill rolled a large garden tiller to the front yard nearly to curb and began tilling a sizable section—presumably for a vegetable garden. About halfway into the project, one of three things happened: 1. He ran out of gas; 2. The tiller malfunctioned; or 3. Bill got hungry, thirsty or tired. In any event, for the rest of first grade and for all of second, third, fourth and fifth grade, the tiller remained exactly where Bill had left it. At some point along the way, Bill himself quit seeing it there, I’m sure, just as he’d stopped noticing all the other junk that filled the yard around the house. I’d become so used to seeing it there, I too eventually overlooked it until . . . one day I saw someone (a buyer perhaps?) load it onto a trailer and haul it away.
Bill’s tiller—our swing—are the way of the world: stare at an eyesore long enough and it disappears from view . . . your view, not a visitor’s. In that moment by the swing, I saw the contraption as Bill’s garden tiller.
“Here,” said Jeff, bringing me back to reality. “Let’s lift the paddleboat and dump the water out.” He was referring to the water in the paddle well in the bottom of the overturned hull. After we’d accomplished that task, Jeff asked why the sailboat lift—another eyesore invisible to me—couldn’t switch places with the paddleboat, “so you could use the boat,” he said with his usual pragmatism. He was quite right. The lift, no longer in use, could be maneuvered farther into the trees and brush where he’d discovered the paddleboat, out of sight from the yard, and the boat could be cleaned up and parked near the rest of the active fleet—kayaks and canoes.
It took some doing, a bit of brawn and a little engineering, but a half hour later, thanks to Jeff’s initiative, the paddleboat was in position to be used for the first time in years.
Naturally, in keeping with the cabin custom of never leaving on time, this extra project delayed our “no later than three o’clock” preparation time for departure. On the drive home, I expressed my amazement over what had been accomplished in three and a half days at the cabin. If ever we’ve had an idle visitor at the Red Cabin, it certainly wasn’t the man from Massachusetts. I’m hoping that in June when we visit his family cabin on a veritable “Walden Pond” a few miles out of Falmouth, I’ll be afforded some idle time to kayak quietly over still waters.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
