When the idea was first floated to me, I smiled and said, “Sounds nice,” in the vague way you do when someone makes a kind offer you have no intention of taking them up on. But my friend was insistent. “You would love Wisconsin,” he said. “And Wood Lake is really special.” He owns a house on the lake and had grown up in the area. His great-grandparents were among the first Swedish settlers in the region, in the 1860’s. Still, I was hesitant. I’ve only known the two coasts. I grew up in Northern California and have lived in New York City for the past 25 years. My idea of a vacation destination is someplace with great restaurants and lots of things to do and see. I didn’t associate fine dining or sightseeing with a rural community with a population of less than a 1,000. But my life has been all about taking leaps of faith, so I took the leap and never looked back.
My first trip to Wood Lake was last fall, when I stayed for a month to write. The leaves were changing and the scenery magnificent, without the hordes of “leaf-change” tourists I’ve encountered in New England. It was so quiet and peaceful, something in me just let go, like a coiled spring I didn’t know was coiled. My cares and woes fell away. Stress? A thing of the past. I’d found Heaven on Earth, and only a 2 1/2 hour flight from New York City. Many of the homeowners on the lake are weekenders, but in general they hail from no farther than the Twin Cities, a 90-minute drive from here. You don’t see a lot of cars with out-of-state license plates unless it’s Minnesota plates, since Wood Lake sit smack dab on the Wisconsin-Minnesota border. I felt like a bird far from its natural habitat. But now I’m wondering if it wasn’t my grandma Woodruff’s genes stirring in me. She was from Omaha, Nebraska. She moved out West when she married my grandfather, and many of her family members did the same to escape the Dust Bowl. So I guess there was a nascent Midwesterner inside me.
I returned last winter with my friend to experience the snowy wonderland of Wood Lake. We went ice fishing, tramped around the pristine snow, and dined on Crockpot stews. I know some of my New Yorker friends thought I was mad, going to the Midwest in winter. Isn’t that a place you want to escape from in winter? more than one person wanted to know. I just smiled. Little did they know what they were missing.
This summer makes three seasons I’ve enjoyed in Wood Lake. I’m vacationing with my husband, who had the same reservations about coming here that I did initially. But one look at this amazing place and he was sold. This morning as we were taking our early dip in the lake, he turned to me and said, “There’s no other place I’d rather be right now. This is perfect.” There’s more than enough to see and do right at our fingertips. As for fine dining, who needs it when you’ve got the awesome fried chicken at the Kozy Kitchen, the juicy and delicious $5.95 burger at T. Dawg’s, and soft-serve ice cream from Burnett’s Dairy (the best you’ll ever eat, guaranteed)?
