"Are we there yet' My eldest, Ben asked for the fiftieth time since we
             piled into the car at 8 AM. It takes a good three hours to drive to the
             Trout Lake, where we own a small, simple vacation cabin. This time I could
             finally give him the answer he wanted to hear. "Here we are now!" Our car,
             a red minivan, pulled into the driveway and the four of us hurried to get
             up out of the seats we'd inhabited for the past few hours. My entire body
             After the car doors slammed, the first thing that hit me, as it always
             did in the past when we came to Trout Lake, is the silence. Each bird call
             echoes through the air and the wind whistles audibly through the trees.
             Gone are the sounds of overhead planes, of humming highway traffic, and of
             the blare of televisions. Enveloped in the silence of the woods for the
             next several days, we would all encounter a profound respite from auditory
             As we gathered our bags from the back of the van to take into the
             cabin, I noticed a hummingbird sucking at a fuchsia flower, at the same
             time as a blue jay swooshed down into the garden in front of our home. The
             sky glowed with the midday sun, which beat down heavily on my bare
             shoulders. Luckily, a warm breeze quickly offered some relief from the
             That night for dinner we cooked up a pile of fresh vegetables, all
             grown locally and sold in a farmer's market in town. On the side we had
             some rice and freshly caught fish, complements of my husband. As usual, my
             daughter Grace demanded dessert, which I provided happily in the form of a
             bowlful of fresh fruit and yogurt. Even she didn't miss the ice cream.
             Now that we are all older, the kids grown, the cabin still offers the
             same sense of health and peace as it did when my kids were young. Bob and I
             are both in our eighties and Ben and Grace both have kids of their own, who
             come to frolic in the lake with us al
             ...