Tainter Lake 1978-2018

Menomonie, Wisconsin

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In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s I was lucky to be friends with a girl whose family owned a cabin on a lake. This is no small thing when you grow up in Minnesota where people are subjected to harsh winters that last from October to April. Summer is the three-month golden hour that feels too brief and too precious to waste.

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Plans and to-do lists are made early in order to use as much of the summer for outdoor fun as possible. It’s a very good day if one can go swimming, be on a boat, float in an inner tube, soak up sun on a dock, or sit by a fire in shorts and a sweatshirt at night.

**Gradient Sunset with Sailboat (1979)**
Sandie Maxa

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It’s an epic day if there is also water skiing, orange pop, s’mores, tether ball, card games, and friends. At the cabin on Tainter Lake, all of these things happened on a daily basis. My nine-year old self was in heaven.

**Sunkist Contains Caffeine (1980)**
Sandie Maxa

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Returning as an adult, I wanted to touch every surface in the old cabin, hoping to relive the experience through osmosis. The pine cabinets, the putty-colored kitchen countertop, the framed needlework on the wall.

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I wanted to hear all the sounds. The sputter of the outboard as it starts up, the purr of the motor in the channel, the laughter coming from Jake’s on the Lake, the swallows whizzing past on their way home.

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Nostalgia makes us happy which is why it is often packaged and offered as an experience. I came across the website for Camp Wandawega in Southern Wisconsin which aims to “connect people to the simple pleasures of simpler times.” The property includes a treehouse, teepees, several “vintage” cabins and a canned-ham trailer. There are also activities like archery, hatchet throwing and shuffleboard. It looks so idyllic in the photos — striped wool blankets on the beds, a rope swing near the lake, paddles mounted to the boat house, dogs in bandanas — that the proprietors encourage a review of their Manifesto of Low Expectations because there is no A/C and no wifi. They don’t want guests to confuse the myth with reality.

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Nostalgia makes me happy, too, and I am lucky to to have the opportunity to revisit this real place. And to still be friends with the girl who owns a cabin on Tainter Lake.

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