Fort Moominbeach

fortlargeUpdate: Jay is right, the kid I couldn’t remember is probably Becky Springer. I was really drawing a blank. Also, the photo is a little smaller but, if you click, it’ll enlarge, although it is probably not much clearer.

Looking back into the Jurassic Age, when we used to build wondrous fort-like structures like this on the beach, I am surprised to see that we were lounging around on *top* of the darn thing and not piled up down on the sand with all of the logs on top of us. Pulp logs used to escape from log booms somewhere up along the coast of Lake Superior and float up onto our beach. So what do you do with pulp logs? Whaddidya think? You build forts, of course. Or stand ’em up in the sand as totem poles or arrange a couple of them into a table with a flat board for a top. For cocktails, don’tcha know. Except I can’t believe that after we got a few rows of logs built, these forts didn’t collapse. We were just kids. We had no idea how to build things. This is a shorter structure than some of the ones I remember. Some of them were taller than I was. There were always boards across the top or partway across the top and we would hang beach towels in various arrangements for window treatments or partitions or whatever we wanted to do.

That’s me in the blue bathing suit in the front lying on my favorite blue and green striped beach towel. I think it’s still around somewhere in the form of some cleaning rags but I could be wrong. Jay is on the back left, Pooh on the front right. I have an annoyingly good memory for people and names but I cannot figure who the blonde in the back is. It is not my cousin Cathy. It *might* be old Chief Morgan’s granddaughter. We used to play with her once in a while when her family was visiting. CanNOT remember her name. Bad bad…

Quick update again. I am sitting on the loverly front deck at the Green Guy Cafe and I have just gotten off the phone with Uber Kayak Woman who arrived here in the Great White North after a 24-hour trip and is now on her way out with Radical Betty in tow. What for? Well, cocktails, of course! What else?

Sayonara!
Kayak Woman

P.S. Alas. The logging industry in the area has either changed or declined and we don’t have logs floating up in great quantities any more. What is the world coming to?

7 Responses to “Fort Moominbeach”

  1. Margaret Says:

    What a cool “log cabin” fort! I loved being at the beach when I was a kid; a friend of mine had a beach place in Gig Harbor, WA and our weekends there were full of memories.

  2. Sam Says:

    We had a large cedar log that washed up around the point that my brother moved to our beach because someone had carved in it “REST AND BE THANKFUL”. We still call that patch of sand Rest and Be Thankful Beach. The log is gone now, perhaps floated out with the ice some spring. Other than that we didn’t have enough wood to make such lovely forts!

  3. Jay Says:

    I couldn’t get the picture bigger, but was wondering if it were Becky Springer? What I really remember are the beach towels. Probably because they stayed around for sooo many years.

  4. jane Says:

    but where is NPJane?!?!?!?!?

  5. rabbi ann white Says:

    Think of all the special forts we had as kids. As adults we should allow the kid in us to still have forts — or hideaways, even if they are for cocktails and chit chat.

  6. Sheila Morley Says:

    Hey Now! Ann; Those logs sound fun! We are at the Southern Lake today, (Houghton) and for the weekend. We walked at least 100 feet out into the water, and little legs (Evan) was only in hip deep the whole time. This cabin is awesome! 🙂

  7. Sheila Morley Says:

    One more thing- I was just thinking of how much bigger everything used to be around here. It is amazing how our perspective changes as we grow. Those forts you made were HUGE! 😉