Well, she flinched over Daddy longlegs and got a bit spastic
about the Dragonflies, but the girl from Queens grabbed a paddle, put on a life
vest and plopped herself down for her first canoe ride in a long time last
weekend at Loveless Lake.
About the only thing Ashley didn’t do during our quick overnight
was to take a dip in Loveless, whose inconsolable name she could not abide. “It
just makes me so sad,” she kept repeating. Even when we explained that the lake
was named after a lumber baron. “It just makes me so sad,” she said.
Nonetheless, we built fires, had a couple rounds of s’mores
and met a few more neighbors at the second annual Loveless Lake picnic. Ashley
quashed her jitters and bravely camped out on the floor of the weeHouse, where
the smitten Chipper kept a vigilant watch over his new friend.
Soon Ashley will be on her way back to graduate
school in California, a budding journalist in the making. I assured her that the bravery and
curiosity she showed deep in the woods of Wisconsin would serve her well in her
chosen profession. 
