The Lakes!

I brought my daughter to the vacation land of my youth….   Gull Lake in Minnesota! It was also a reunion with cousins and close family friends who also spent summer vacations on Gull. Long memory talks, walks, much laughter, singing, meals, boat rides, sunsets, oriole and eagle sightings.  All to the sound of lake waves.                 

And some moments alone, taking a chance working in the sun, finishing with beads, sewing too. 

This is a different kind of beach than Maine...deep amounts of reddish sand with bigger stones of earthy red, yellow, grey and brown. The natural colours around me help to pick the perfect bead for my brooch.

Yet, my eye is always on the agate hunt.

Could there be one under where I sit?

I had such a constant desire and sustained energy back then to have my eye on the ground hunting for agates.  Has much changed today?  I am at peace being a scavenger.


As a kid, in the 50’s and 60’s, I was always excited for my two week stay on the Lake. We would make the 9 hour trip from Iowa over night and kids would maybe get some sleep on a mattress in back of the station wagon.  My brother, Arthur Russell, wrote a song lyric in Wild Combination...”That’s us before we got there. That’s morning time, before we got there….”  Now the cottage sold, most memories fading, the song lyric remains sweet.

Arthur playing his cello on the beach in the early eighties

I love living in Maine.  My homeland is in Iowa.

And I have roots in Minnesota.