I married into a family
cabin almost 30 years ago, which is a marvelous happenstance, except for the
October Saturday every year when My Lovely Wife and I are called upon to drive
200 miles north to Cass County, Minn., for the annual bringing in of the dock.

Cabins have docks because
people like to walk out over the water and climb into speedboats and sailboats
and even rowboats, I suppose, without getting their ankles wet. Others like to
jump into the water from the end of the dock, swim around for a while and then
lay on the dock in the sun in order to bring a well-earned sunburn back to the
office after their vacation. Still others enjoy standing on the dock while
casting a line far out into the water in hopes of snagging a walleye or some other
form of aquatic life. I do not actually belong to any of these groups of
dock-lovers, but I understand I’m in the minority on this.

Anyway, MLW’s grandfather,
who purchased the property on Woman Lake in the 1920s, was a civil engineer who
invented the BridgeCo dock, which, according to the marketing materials, was
“built like a bridge”. That means it has beams and stanchions and bridge
decking — a whole lot of very heavy redwood and steel, all designed for
durability and convenience. And, in fact, this particular dock has been in use
at the Parker cabin since before my first visit there in 1977, when MLW was
simply My Lovely Girlfriend.

So, I have nothing but
admiration for the creativity and engineering skill that went into designing
this particular piece of north woods infrastructure. And, over the years, I’ve
marveled at the technique developed to bring the dock in without having to set
foot in the 40-degree water. This is the primary advantage, it seems to me, of
owning a dock built like a bridge. And I have watched in wonder as, first,
MLW’s father and, eventually, her most mechanically minded brother, guided us
through the process.

Very briefly, here’s how it
works: You loosen the bolts holding the two beams to the far stanchion, loop a
burly rope around the stanchion, then remove the decking until you’ve reached the
point where the beams are held in place on the next stanchion. You remove the
bolts holding the beams there, drag them onto shore while the far stanchion
quietly falls into the icy water — still attached to the sturdy rope. Then you
simply grab the rope and pull the stanchion (which weighs, I’m guessing, maybe 50,000
lbs.) along the lake bottom until it’s close enough for you to yank it out of
the water and stack it on the shore next to the boathouse. Then, repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat. Piece of cake.

Until very recently, MLW’s
mechanically minded brother would handle most of this. He’d unscrew the bolts
without dropping the socket wrench into the lake, wrap the rope around the
stanchions, etc., while the rest of us carried in the decking (not a
particularly easy task, but you get my drift). He eventually tired of this
particular arrangement, and for the past couple of Octobers, it’s been me and
MLW’s less mechanically inclined brother wielding the socket wrenches and
hauling the steel out of the water.

So, last Saturday we were
out there in a persistent drizzle, wrenching and yanking and schlepping along
with our two LWs (all of us, I hasten to add, in our 50s) and getting the kind
of workout that creates a Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness that’s not really
delayed at all. It’s a good thing I’ve been working out, I was thinking as I struggled
to pull the first stanchion out of the water. But this was lifting of a different
sort: deep squats with a clean and jerk thrown in for good measure; a tug-of-war
with a big old wet rope and a two-legged hunk of steel; dead lifts with soggy
redwood. It all kind of reminded me of the stuff John Hinds does at his
Madison, Wisc., Monkey Bar Gym — only not so much fun.

Anyway, the dock’s all
packed away for the winter now, and most of the soreness has left my body –
just in time for me to hit the gym tonight. Maybe I’ll work on those deep
squats and deadlifts. Or . . . I could start working out an argument for the
aesthetic pleasures of an unadorned shoreline.