Dad remembrance pilgrimage: Days 12-13

Previous leg: Columbus, Nebraska to Windom, Minnesota

July 21-22, 2022: Windom to Crosslake, Minnesota

After waking up in Windom, “the little city that would,” I packed up my tent and started for Crosslake, the northernmost destination of my journey. These two days also proved to be the most emotionally complicated two days of the trip.

An actual Minnesota town right on the edge of the prairie

Before departing for the north woods, I had one last stop to make in southern Minnesota. Grandpa served as the pastor of First United Presbyterian Church of Madelia 1956-1961. Dad attended elementary school there and began his baseball career with the Coast to Coast little league team. It was also where his youngest brother was born.

On Thursday, July 21, I had a good (albeit masked and distanced) visit with Rev. Penny Johnson, their current pastor. She let me poke around the building and described what the sanctuary would have looked like in grandpa’s era. Shortly after he left they had a fire which caused a remodel and rebuilding of the front steps.

The congregation is 153 years old and has weathered COVID fairly well. Penny said that several of the older people still remember grandpa and the family. One of the fun things I learned was that the congregation has a teddy bear ministry. Every pew has a fuzzy friend available so no one ever has to worship alone. Anyone in need of comfort is invited to take a bear home with them as a reminder of the love of the congregation.

As always, I was incredibly honored by the hospitality I received. Thank you to Rev. Johnson for the time she spent with me. Before leaving I spent some time exploring Madelia. The Presbyterian Church is only a few blocks from downtown. One of the treasures I encountered was the old fashioned single screen weekend-only theater with a huge marquee out front. Fun to see it still in operation.

Crosslake: it’s complicated

From there it was time to head north towards Crosslake. When my dad’s family was living in Sanborn they began to take fishing trips to northern Minnesota. They stayed at several resorts before my grandpa bought a bare patch of dirt for a ridiculously low price in the mid-1950’s. Eventually, he built an extremely rudimentary fishing cabin that became the site of our family’s summers for a couple of generations. When grandpa retired they winterized the cabin and it became their home for the remainder of my grandparents’ lives.

We were incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Buying the cabin would be utterly impossible today. Many of our summer memories involve the cabin and the family who gathered here. As our family moved around to different parishes the cabin was the consistent geographic center of our shared reality. It was my happy place and a good approximation of what I hope heaven might look like.

For many reasons that I will not get into in this setting, that cabin is no longer in the family. That era of our shared lives together died with my grandpa. Although my aunt and cousin both still live in Crosslake, neither one lives on the lake and I had not been back here since my grandpa’s funeral eight years ago.

Riding into town that afternoon was surreal and, truthfully, a little gut wrenching. The community has experienced exponential growth, but many of the landmarks I remember from childhood still remain. Unfortunately, the reason we all came to this area is no longer accessible to any of us. All those touchstones serve as reminders of just how much we lost.

In a weird way, it’s not even really about the cabin, but about the relationships we had with each other during that stretch of our lives. My friends from agricultural families describe similar sensations when the “old home place” is sold after a relative’s death. For a couple generations of the Williams family, the cabin was our “old home place.” Selling it marked the end of an era. Coming to visit meant reopening some wounds that continue to hurt.

Even in the midst of that emotional background, getting to see Sarah, Kate, and Seymour was phenomenal. We spent a couple days eating, talking, and meeting some of the friends from their current life in town. A couple of those friends even took us for a boat ride Friday afternoon, July 22, to visit the old cabin. We took a brief swim out front and told stories about what things looked like when we growing up, as well as back when dad was a kid. I’m not even sure how to describe what I felt when I saw the cabin. It is a different place. I’m grateful I saw it, but also saddened that it is not what we remember. Most importantly, I’m saddened we’re not who we were in that era.

Cruising down memory lane

There are reminders of the old cabin in several houses in our family. Dad’s aunt painted a picture of the rudimentary structure my grandpa built in the 1950’s. The shower in that place was a garden hose coming out of the wall. The stories that came out of that find are epic. Maps of the chain of lakes, fishing memorabilia, and Minnesota knickknacks dot every house in the Willams family, mine included.

A great deal has changed over the years. The cabin has expanded from a rudimentary, homebuilt plywood construction with no heat, to a comfortable home that provided my grandparents many years of happiness. Today a new deck has been added. Windows have changed. The entire place has gone upscale in a way my grandparents could not even imagine.

Even the lake has changed. The boats are bigger. The traffic is heavier. The island we used to fish at near Birch Narrows has completely eroded. For better or worse, the Whitefish Chain all of us grew up on no longer exists. All of that said, it is still a beautiful place. People come from all around the world to enjoy the majesty of Minnesota and maybe catch a few fish along the way. That’s what brought our family up here 65 years ago, and it is what continues to bring people up here today.

All of that was going through my head as our hosts motored past the old cabin. I wish I could say last month’s visit provided all the closure I needed. It didn’t, but it helped. Grief is complicated. At that moment my feelings about dad, his parents, the cabin where they taught me to fish, my Air Force situation, and all the world events of the last several years are mixed together in one giant ball of emotional yuck.

I’ll get through all this, but the reality of all that garbage is weighing heavily at the moment. At the same time, I am incredibly grateful for all the memories we created there together. Most people never get to have any of the opportunities I was blessed to experience. I just pray that the people and the things we lost will never be forgotten.

Like I said, grief is complicated.

Day 12 mileage: 263.5 (1,981.2 total)

Next leg: Crosslake, Minnesota to Windsor, Wisconsin