Hayward, Wisconsin- Becca Schoenauer

Becca Schoenauer 

Carol Severino 

Travel Writing Seminar 

9/11/18 

Place Assignment: Hayward, WI 

One of my favorite places in the entire world is Hayward, WI. The town of roughly 2,300 people exists within Sawyer County (which is roughly 16,000 people and 1,350 square miles of land) and contains over 300 lakes. Specifically, I grew up on Lac Courte Oreilles. This entire area was just lakes and forests: for the most part completely uninhabited up on the lake to the point of having to drive on dirt roads for miles to get to the cabin. The minute I step out of the car and walk towards the cabin, all I can see is green. I can hardly see the two other cabins in this area. I can see the trees that create a canopy above both the driveway and the cabin. And I can see the sneak peak of the lake behind the cabin, extremely blue and calm surrounded entirely with trees and shrubs on the other shore line and not a single house on that side. Our undisturbed bay that branches from the main lake is always super quiet, only fishermen go here. The quiet and the calm along with the abundance of the green and blues and browns create the sense of untouched beauty in my mind: making me incredibly at ease.  

Besides the outdoors, the only other thing I can see is our cabin. The chipping tan paint on the side of the house and the staircase leading down to our dock make me chuckle. Even though my grandparents are continuously painting, they will always be imperfect but stunning in their own way. As I enter the door and feel the rough, pokey floor mat beneath my feet, I hear the sound of my parents using the door knocker that is shaped like a woodpecker echo throughout the house. The smells of old wood and wet dog greet me as I walk in. All the windows are open, and I can smell the rain that must have just come down. The sight pops in my mind of the lightning hitting the trees, the cracking sounds as the trees blow in the wind, the humidity finally getting wrung out of the clouds: the amazing storms that come through Hayward.  

Right at that moment I can hear the bending trees as I watch them sway back and forth in the light breeze, the sounds of leaves rustling in the wind, the pecking of woodpeckers beating at the trees, and the animals that live down below. I picture the time that I saw a bear while I was on the hammock, snorting just feet away. I picture the kayaks we sit on in the middle of the lily pads that sit in corners of the bay: the sounds of the frogs croaking within them. I can hear the soda can, make-shift targets we’ve hung from tree branches collide with one another as they move in the wind. I can taste the butterscotch candies my grandparents stocked up on from the “towns” candy store. However, what I am most excited for is that night.  

Nights in Hayward are accompanied with night floats in the middle of the lake on our pontoon and watching the unblocked blankets of stars that we can see above, the taste of the root-beer floats that my grandpa always makes on the first night there, and the tracing of the shapes I find in the wooden boards while I try and sleep. The knots are perfect for imagining the hidden shapes: I see the UFO I spotted when I was 8, the cat I imagined in the knot I can see on my left. I trace these shapes with my finder, following the ridges in the rough, unsanded wood boards and fall asleep content with the warm air and the sounds of the lake.