From the Editor: Common Ground

I suspect that we have a lot in common, you and I. When you talk to a fellow cabin or cottage owner at the end of your driveway, do you find yourself saying, “The same thing happened to me!” or “I know exactly what you mean”? While editing this magazine the past 12 years, I’ve had that experience many times.

Baseball great Yogi Berra had a phrase for this: “It’s like déjà vu all over again” (one of his malapropisms).

Well, when I read Christy Heitger-Ewing’s column on page 21 of the March 2014 issue, it was a déjà vu moment for me, with a cringe. In Christy’s story, she tells of her husband losing his wedding ring in the lake by her family cabin.

Several years ago on a hot summer day, my wife, Carol, and I were treading water in the lake by her sister Barb and husband Mike’s cabin. The water, unlike the air, was cold, enough so that Carol’s fingers shrank and her wedding ring slipped off. Where we were treading water, the lake is 20–25 feet deep. I know the depth because some weeks later we used Barb and Mike’s scuba gear, and a rented underwater metal detector, in an attempt to retrieve the ring. No dice. I suspect some hungry bass gobbled up the sparkly object when it drifted in front of his snout as it sank.

As you read the many stories in the March issue of Cabin Life, I hope you relate to them and feel a kinship with the cabiners featured. And I hope you relate in ways that make you smile and reminisce, not cringe!