Of course that’s a quote from a Gordon Lightfoot song. The great lakes are not like the oceans but they are treacherous in their own way as any body of water is. I mean toddlers drown in bathtubs or buckets in their own back yards. Things happen fast.

I don’t know everything about living on a great lake but I have “summered” in this location since I was born and I am quite familiar with its various weather patterns. Including that they can change PDQ.

Today our bay was dead calm until afternoon. The GG took off in the Motor Bote in dead calm waters. Fine, I thought. He is busy and not in my hair. I was working on my current “scrambled eggs” prodject and although my brain needed distraction in order to function, xwords and such were a better distraction than randomness from the GG. Plus he was wearing earphones most of the day and couldn’t hear me when I DID want to get his attention. I dunno what he was listening to. Hopefully not MAGA crapola.

He had been gone for a while when I sensed that the wind was starting to pick up. Okay… It isn’t terribly strong yet and maybe he’ll come home on his own. When it picked up a little more, I called him. What did we do before cell phones? We worried.

Where are you? I figgered he might be out near the shipping channel but it turns out he was in the process of being porterized (a half mile or so to the west on the other side of the Birch Point range light). And thank the gods, he had noticed the wind and was just leaving. He knows a lot more about botes than I do and understands wind conditions. But I am a wife and a moom and I am always counting heads.

Okay. I listened for the sound of the motor bote to arrive back in our bay. I didn’t hear the motor over the wind but I did hear the hull of the bote thudding against the waves as it approached our beach.

He arrived safely. The waves were not all that big and he had a good time with whatever bouncing around he had to do. I’m not sure I wouldda been a happy camper but I am always glad when a boater arrives back on the beach safely.

We haven’t lost anyone on this beach to a water accident in the 100 years the fam has owned it although there was a close call a few years ago. I want to keep it that way.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 14th, 2023 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.