It was the summer before my senior year. Just as we normally do, my family and I had congregated on Beaver Island, the largest isle in Lake Michigan, to commence our annual summer festivities. A vacation filled with boating, swimming, biking and exploring was yet to be experienced, leaving the air ripe with the pungent smells of opportunity and excitement.
For at least a couple years prior, my cousins and I had lightly discussed the prospects of a sailing excursion to one of the islands in Beaver's surrounding archipelago. Our conversations were all in jest, of course, seeing as we weren't quite old enough to take on Lake Michigan and deserted wilderness without adult supervision.
But when the summer of 2014 rolled around, we were old enough. At least, my cousins Nick, Harriet and I were. Nick and I had just turned 17, ecstatic to blow through our last year of high school, and Harriet was just shy of 21. Prime ages to enthusiastically take on a lake adventure. Or so we thought.
After shuffling through several maps over dinner, listening to weather forecasts and engaging in occasionally heated arguments about which routes to take, we finally concocted a solid plan (which, in my family, is itself an enormous accomplishment). We were to pack a sailboat full of sleeping gear, bug spray and food and sail west of Beaver to High Island for an overnight camping trip.
We were thrilled to embark on our very own adventure, free from the constraints of our parents and the complaints from our younger cousins. It was the perfect occasion to additionally prove our traveling, boating and camping competence to our parents.
So, at six the next Friday morning, my cousins and I awoke, lids heavy and spirits high, to be chauffeured to the harbor by our grandfather, who was with us every step of the planning process.
The dawn was peaceful, and towards the end, very pink. A serene sunrise warmly greeted us, along with a gentle breeze that picked up as we rigged our Boston Whaler. Seagulls softly cried cheerful songs above us, as if to wish us well on our journey. And before we knew it, we were off.
The sail to High Island was an untroubled but long one. The morning dragged on, with comfortable wind speeds and a tepid water climate. Foreseeing this very situation, Nick smartly packed a deck of playing cards to combat the inevitable boredom. Harriet introduced us to the wonderful literature of sea shanties, and we tried to even write our own. I contributed by cracking bad jokes about how something was bound to go wrong on our trip, given our luck on previous ventures. The jokes were not popular.
After running out of card games to play, shanties to sing and jokes to make, Nick suggested that we try calling the house. Harriet and I agreed. Nick retrieved the waterproof bag in the front of the boat, which contained a cell phone, a flashlight, water bottles, snacks, a lime (to prevent scurvy, of course), a Swiss Army knife, the deck of cards and a radio, which he pulled out after a couple minutes of digging.
Into it, he half-yelled, "Hello, this is the Boston Whaler. It is about noon, we are approximately two miles from our destination, the winds are fine and let me tell you — we are bored. Bored, bored, bored, bored bored." Harriet and I snickered at his reenactment of a BBC "Airplane" episode.
Through the radio came a garbled, static-y response which was impossible to decipher. We tried again to convey how terribly uninteresting our trip had been, but only received another incomprehensible message.
"Maybe the signal will get better as we move further south," Harriet proposed.
"You're probably right," Nick said as he stowed the radio back in the bag. Little did we know that our message was delivered to our anxious parents in the same static-y gibberish we'd heard from their end, and it frightened them to such a great extent that they asked the local airport to have a departing plane check on us, which flew overhead about an hour after our failed radio call. We simply waved at it.
After a couple more hours of sailing upwind, rounding the southern tip of High and braving its rocky shores, we finally arrived at our camping spot — the bottom of a sand dune. The three of us excitedly unloaded the boat and tried our best to heave it onshore, anchoring it to a neighboring tree.
We pitched camp a few yards inland, made ourselves a quick lunch of cheese and Lil' Smokies and geared up to hike through High Island. Because High is deserted and receives relatively few visitors during the year, the trail isn't well marked, leaving us to bush-whack our way through a decent portion of it.
We made it to the western side with little time to spare before sunset, and quickly set off back to our campsite to cook up some dinner. The hike back went much faster, as we'd somewhat remembered the clearings and artifacts we'd passed.
Back at our tent and dinner cooking, I said, "Today was a success," through a mouthful of under-cooked hot dog. The small fire we'd made blazed fiercely against the vermilion sky. The sunset was beautiful, and we were lucky to be on a sand dune to admire it.
I crossed my legs and reached for another slice of cheese. "But really, how many of our adventures turn into complete failures? I mean, today we sailed for six hours without drowning, saw the wilderness of High Island without getting killed by it and now we're experiencing one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen. And the bugs aren't even that bad!"
Harriet and Nick laughed, which was much better than the weak chuckles they'd mustered in response to my previous jokes about our incompetence.
We ended the night by shooting off a couple of small fireworks from the very top of the dune for our parents on Beaver to see. "We only saw a few sparks," they jokingly fuss. With our fire extinguished and the stars out, more brilliant and numerous than I've seen them, we said goodnight to each other and fell into deep, content slumbers.
