Friday #10: August 5, 2016

If you are a woman and you’re reading this post, I predict that I can instantly and significantly lower your blood pressure by uttering three magic words: “Girlfriends cabin weekend.” Just thinking about one makes you smile and take a deep breath in and out, am I right?  

As one friend put it, “Health insurance should cover this.”

I’ve been lucky enough to have had dozens of girlfriends cabin weekends over the years, at different places, different times of year, and with different groups of women – some members practically unchanged for 25 years and counting, some overlapping and morphing together over the years, some falling by the wayside as friendships and circumstances shift over time. But always full of simple adventures and memories that sustain us for the days and years to come.

There was the one that started out with a bang when I hit a deer on the way up north in the late Wisconsin twilight. Fortunately (for the people part of the equation, at least) I was driving a friend’s impenetrably huge Olds 88 rather the little tin-can of a car I had at the time. No one has ever let one the other girls forget that she kept frantically repeating, “All we can do is call the DNA, just call the DNA!” “Umm, do mean the DNR?” somebody asked. “WHATEVER!” While everyone’s blood pressure was certainly on the rise just then, the rest of the weekend was relaxing enough to bring it down to a pre-deer-incident level.

And then there was the time somebody from the deep south showed up with a huge crate containing the entire contents of of their liquor cabinet and said sweetly, “I brought the cordials.” (That might have been the same weekend we did shots of Goldschlager and somebody kissed the girl next to her with a little more enthusiasm than we typically show for each other in that way.)

And the time we sat on giant rocks at the edge of a cold Ely lake eating chocolate cake with our hands and watching the northern lights put on a spectacular birthday show just for me.

The time somebody used up most of the freezer space with freshly-pumped breast milk.

The time I was on the Atkins diet and too weak to climb the stairs from the sauna back up to the house.

The time somebody got waaaaaay too emotional and spent the whole weekend sobbing uncontrollably, which instituted a strict “no-crying-on-girls-weekend” policy that has been strongly enforced to this day.

The time we first tried the incredible “Glacial Rain” treatment at the Aveda spa. And the time we did our own spa treatments and I was 8 months pregnant and made a gigantic mud mask with cucumber “eyes” on my towering stomach.

The few years we devoted to crafty activities like scrapbooking pictures of our kids, until we devolved back into everyone’s most comfortable mode: eat, talk,  drink, and laugh.

Maybe we’ll thumb through magazines or crossword puzzles or knitting baskets while we’re doing it. Maybe we’ll take a break to ski or hike or boat or swim or skate or hot tub or pedicure or massage, depending on that year’s particular accommodations and financial constraints. But always: eat, talk, drink, and laugh.

This summer’s getaway to an old friend’s cabin in northern Wisconsin was no exception. It started at noon on my Bifocal Friday, and was as lovely as any weekend could possibly be.

We marveled over the décor of this “Voyageur Village” model house from the

70s, which has been blessedly left intact by my friend’s family all these years.

We floated and swam from the pontoon boat for hours on end.

We enjoyed a greasy breakfast out at the local diner.

We picked just the tiniest fraction of the wild blackberries that
run rampant along every wooded meadow lane.

And we nearly peed ourselves playing Cards Against Humanity late into the evening.

(No pictures thankfully available).

In the end, we came home a little more physically tired than we’d been going into the weekend, but surely a lot more soul rested.