Our Vacation

One of our vacation goals was to spend time fishing. It seems like we're always too busy to spend much time doing that when we're home. We all looked forward to sitting on the dock, casting our line into the calm waters, and pulling out fish after fish. As so often happens, reality was just a little different. The dock was a little small, so it was difficult for all 4 of us to fish at the same time. We also didn't catch an overabundance of fish, and what we did catch, was small and exactly like what we catch in the little ponds around us. While those things were a little disappointing, we did spend a lot of time fishing, and we still had a lot fun.

 

 

Every morning before the kids got up, Ron and I went down to the dock together and fished. It was quiet. The sun was just coming up. We didn't reel much in, but we enjoyed just sitting together on the dock in the quiet and watching the water slowly ripple by. One morning we watched a mink swim across the water. On another, a trio of loons circled overhead, calling to each other with their funny sounding calls. It was peaceful.

One evening around dusk Ron and the kids went down to fish. Danielle came back after awhile, but Ron and Tyler stayed out well after the sun went down. They didn't catch much, but they spent time together talking, fishing, and watching the shooting stars.

Another day when we went to Algonquin and it rained, we tried fishing at one of the lakes in the park. Tyler and I gave up easily, but Ron in his sweatshirt and Danielle in her jacket and rainboots, stood in the rain and cast their lines. They caught a couple small fish, but mostly it was the togetherness in the rain that made it special.

And on one of our last nights, the four of us went down to the dock to fish as the sun set. We stayed well after sunset, despite hardly catching anything. After awhile we felt like we had to whisper because the forest was so quiet in the dark. We watched the sky change from blue to various shades of blue, purple, and black as little white lights slowly dotted the sky. And then we sat back (since the fish weren't biting anyway) and counted the shooting stars. No electronics. No distractions. Just us and the shooting stars in the dark. It was pretty close to perfect.

When we talked about our favorite parts of vacation on the way home, these were the moments each one of us mentioned. (The kids also mentioned trying to catch a mouse in the cabin one night.) It turns out the fun wasn't so much in the actual fishing as it was in just being together in the moment.