My wife and I have a cabin on Yellow Lake in Wisconsin. We added on and made it into a home when we retired in 2000, and moved there from Minneapolis.
The lake-living and viewing is wonderful. The lake is good for fishing and hunting, but we have found that we spend more of our free time (and we have lots) on our 37 acres of adjacent woods. The land provides us with the hiking trails we use daily with Ellie, our yellow Labrador mix, the firewood we cut and split each year for heating the cabin, and for our amateurish attempt in forest management. We have been buying and planting bare root trees and shrubs for years and have enjoyed watching them flower and grow.
The most enjoyment we have from our woods, however, happens when our three grandchildren come from Phoenix. They love to climb the hills, use the deer stand for their tree house, pick wildflowers, eat blueberries and blackberries, and on.
We have constructed a fort for them from our abundance of firewood from the July 1, 2011, blowdown storm. Our latest project is a "log cabin," complete with troll, wood-burning fireplace and a Weber charcoal grill. There is still a lot of work to do and the back bedrooms are a little drafty.
Ken and May Schultz, Webster, Wis.
