Rain beating upon the porch roof, chainsaws whirling down the road, NPR in the background, these are the sounds of cabin living. Bubs and Harry went to town, leaving us to our own devices, on an otherwise quiet morning. Mergansers, easily a hundred of them, the Soo Locks Tour Boat making its regular Wednesday run and the occasional ore boat, these are the sights on this not quite yet a beach day. Anne and I lazily luxuriated the morning through, reveling in doing almost nothing, while the rest of the world revolves around itself. Lunchtime already? Where did the morning go? Sun’s out!

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The photos are from yesterday. The customs boat was locking through when I took a tourist break from the Laundromat. With four 300 horsepower engines, radars and FLIRs the old adage was true, the size of the boy is reflected in the price of his toys. We finally made it down to the beach after dinner and had it all to ourselves. It was still hot and very sunny, even with only an hour to sundown. The fire ring down past Doelle’s was left standing up. It made for a nice picture frame. Speaking of Doelle’s, there is a Wi-Fi signal down there now. I thought that the wispy clouds and the sun dappled ripples in both the water and the sand made for nice pictures. Still warm, a full hour after dinner, I went for a dip that Anne captured.

Gitchy Goomy, gitchy gaddy
Sit you laddie down on your daddy’s knee
And ain’t it a nice place to be
Goggin noggin, papa’s rockin’
Like a mockin’ bird in a windy tree
And that ain’t no place for me
Been there one time, been there two times
Been there three times
More than I care to be
But we’re gonna make it through
Gitchy Goomy – Neil Diamond

The rain continues to linger well into the afternoon. This weather is beginning to make me smart from Jane’s chiding about valuing every single beach day. On the other hand, I could be out riding in this weather. The bananas were starting to go bad, so Anne decided to make banana bread. She had to “borrow” some flour from Fran’s cabin to make it, so we will likely go visit her and bring some of the bread to share. I went out to pick a few blueberries, but the rain curtailed that activity. I got just enough to spread as a veneer across the top of the loaf. I got the above quote from “The Song of Hiawatha” from Wiki. The article went on to explain that Longfellow manage to work into his poem many Ojibway words. For example, the word for blueberry is miin and plural, miinan for berries and miinagaawanzh for the bush upon which the berries grow.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called ‘Gitche Gumee’
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty.
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early.
– Gordon Lightfoot

I have no idea what Neil Diamond’s song, Gitchy Goomy, means, but I don’t think that it refers to Lake Superior. Then of course there is Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, which you can hear on an endless loop if you ever visit the shipwreck museum on Whitefish Point, although he spells Gitchy Goomy the Canadian way. 😉