Living His Dream

Living His Dream-By Kate

I am from a small town, Mora, 60 miles north of the Twin Cities.  My parents still live in the house I grew up in.  When I refer to my childhood house as home, Walter reminds me my home is on James Ave in Minneapolis.  It is the old farm house on top of the hill above Fish Lake.  In the fifties, lake side properties were sold off to build houses creating a quarter mile dirt road around my parent’s home.  This loop was a path which us kids and the neighborhood dogs ran freely when kids and dogs ran freely.  The grandchildren did not get this privilege until they were much older and even now have a very short leash.  As adults we walk the loop after a Kramschuster dinner of meat and potatoes. 

One day Walter and I escaped to the loop alone after a big dinner, leaving the kids to play with cousins.  As we were walking the loop I told Walter little stories about each house: the Hill’s gave us Cracker Jacks, Gloria and Arlin left out agates to find, Grunke’s dog bit Ann while on her bike, Mrs. Anderson grew up the old farm house, Beckler’s was my first babysitting job where I mostly played, Blaisdale’s springer spaniel, Dutch, roamed the paths with our puppy dog, Ruby.  As we turned one of the corners to make the loop, Walter wanted to take the fork in the road to a second row of houses.  This road was less traveled by us because it was a dead end and a loop was always more satisfying than tracking back in the same direction.  Although less familiar, I had plenty of stories that I thought of as very entertaining.  When we reached the dead end, I thought we would turn around, but Walter wanted to take yet another road even less traveled, but this time it wasn’t even a road.  He wanted to go through the trees and brush and of course I agreed because trying to find a loop instead of back tracking is much more satisfying.  So we trampled through the woods, shrubs, wet grass and broken sticks.  In an area where I lived for 18 years and then visited for another 20 years I never adventured through this particular plot of land.  We ended out on the edge of a field, turned right and ended on Fish Lake Road with soggy feet that led us back to home (my parents home, not James Ave home).  

This sums up what it is like to live with Walter’s sense of adventure.  We can be on the most familiar and routine activity and Walter will find away to tweak it into an adventure.  I have always known about Walter’s dream of living on a boat.  When we first talked about getting married I asked him what if I didn’t want to live on a boat.  He said, “Well, maybe I will end up not wanting to live on a boat and you will want to.  We would just have to talk about.”  For the next 10 years Walter talked about living on a boat every day of marriage.    

So the question isn’t just do I want to live on a boat with Walter and the kids, but is this the adventure I choose to have.  Living with Walter, adventure will be had.  If it is not a boat adventure, it will be something else.  So here I am choosing to have this adventure.  In all relationships we give in, make compromises or maybe find “win-win” solutions.  Sometimes you have to take a step back, look at what you have and carve out something meaningful for yourself.  My dream wasn’t specifically to live on a sailboat, but in a round about way it is an avenue to get at what I am looking for.  Admittedly, a month and a half into the trip what I am looking for feels muddled.  My reasons for living on a boat were something about living simply, being in nature, becoming closer to my family.  However, life feels more complicated, nature is exhausting me and I fight with my family all the time.  Adventures are about the “good feeling” experiences.  These moments are what dreams hope for.  However, adventures also have struggles, problem solving and hard work.  Perhaps it is in the hard moments that adventures give real meaning and the pleasurable times are there so we can take a breathe.