Love Is A Lie – Love Is A Big Pile Of Fun

Anne’s family cabin is a 1920s era log cabin on the shores of Lake Superior. Situated at the eastern end of the lake, Canada is a mere two miles across the water. When Anne’s mother was a little girl, she and her siblings would play revenuers and rum-runners instead of cops and robbers. The cabin sits near enough the center of a beautiful half-mile long sandy beach. In year’s past, the lake water was frigid, even at the height of the summer. Now with global warming, on some summer days, the water is almost balmy. At the far end of the beach is the old Doelle’s place, a former lighthouse keeper’s house. In year’s past, with a cabin full of relatives, a degree of privacy could be found by walking down to this Empty Quarter. This sense of privacy was always more illusion than fact; an accurate census of high-powered binoculars on the beach has never been compiled. In recent years, further development at this end of the beach has shredded even this illusion.

Last summer, on one of our after supper strolls down the beach, we came upon some sand script on the beach. “Love is a lie” was scrawled in the sand. I suspect that the author was one of a pair of beach fellow denizens, young girls vacationing at a neighboring cabin. Jay and Carl were walking with Anne and me when we found this text. Altering the original message, Carl wrote, “Love is a big pile of fun”. If memory serves, “fun” was an editorial substitution for what was originally written. Ah, young love with all of its joys and pangs. I’m sure that the original authoress did not appreciate the meddling of a pair of old married couples.