Psalm 95:4,5 “IN HIS HAND ARE THE DEPTHS OF THE EARTH AND THE MOUNTAIN PEAKS BELONG TO HIM. THE SEA IS HIS - FOR HE MADE IT AND HIS HANDS FORMED THE DRY LAND!”

I’ve done a bit of travelling throughout my life! More than some. Not as much as others.

When I was twelve, my parents took my brothers, Phil and Tim and myself on a road trip to Alberta. My sister, Susan and her husband Harry lived north of Edmonton and they were expecting their second child. We planned to camp in our tent-trailer on the way there and back again. I have memories of lots of mosquitos sneaking into our tent-trailer and my Dad spraying “OFF” every night. On the first night of our trip west, we stopped at Sault St. Marie on beautiful Lake Superior at Pancake Bay. It wasn’t so beautiful, though, that first night of camping. It stormed and stormed the whole night long but we woke to a sunshiny day. As we headed north up highway 17, we hadn’t gone 50 miles before traffic came to a stop. The road had washed away at a bridge and we had to turn around - back to Sault St. Marie - and cross over to the USA and travel west that way. The only thing I remember is stopping in Minot, Minnesota to visit a friend of my moms. After arriving in Alberta, we went to the Calgary stampede - where I remember my Mom and Dad entering a PIE EATING contest. My mom stuffed cream pie into my blindfolded Dad’s mouth as fast as she could! It was fun to watch my parents having fun. And then on to Banff. Seeing the Rockie Mountains for the first time was spectacular. I will never forget that first glimpse of those mountains. God did something special for us when He created such a beautiful place. We spent time at Sue’s but that baby was late and Cheryl was born a week after we went home. We drove home through Canada and the prairies were so flat (and boring). It was good to get back into Manitoba and finally Ontario. So much more picturesque.

My first time flying was from Ottawa to Winnipeg. I was 16 years old and Dad and Mom and Tim and I flew together to Phil and Gwen’s wedding. It was quite something for our family to fly somewhere. Phil and Gwen celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last week. Time flies.

Through the years Randy and I travelled to the USA to several conferences - Monterrey, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and Ashville - to name a few. We had a few vacations to the Caribbean to celebrate our 20th, 25th and 35th wedding anniversaries. Those islands are especially warm and magical in the middle of a Canadian winter. Our young family took at trip to the east coast one summer and that was super fun. We still laugh about spending all of ten minutes at the Anne of Green Gables House - DRIVING BY the reversing rapids and not stopping - but spending a lot of time on the beaches - throwing the frisbee and the football - packing conversations and laughter into those days and nights.

We took the kids to Los Angeles, California, once when they were little. That was when Randy was on the Price is Right! We went to Disney Land and Knot’s Berry Farm. We went to the beaches in California. We took a side trip down to San Diego. We also went to Florida one year and stayed in my parent’s friend’s trailer - we made great memories that spring.

Since Harv and I have been married we have had some wonderful vacations to some pretty special countries. We spent our honey moon in Jamaica - we spent several winters in Barbados - a quick trip down to Cuba and a family vacation to the Dominican Republic.

We’ve spent time in Great Britain and Europe. We’ve seen magnificent castles and great cathedrals. We’ve taken a cable car to high up in the Alps in Switzerland. We took a boat ride on beautiful Lake Geneva. We took the Sound of Music walking tour in Austria. We went to the famous Oberammergau in Germany where they hold a live Passion play every ten years. Harv and I have enjoyed all of these beautiful spots together and I’m sure there will be more in our future.

So many beautiful things to see. So many wonderful places to visit. Mountains and Seas.

And yet - the most beautiful spot in the whole world (to me) - is in eastern Ontario - just north of Kingston - at Bedford Mills - Devil Lake, near the little village of Westport, Ontario. Harv and I were in Westport just last week and enjoyed a delightful lunch at THE COVE restaurant.

Our family first went to Devil Lake in the early 70’s when my sister, Brenda and her husband, Ken, bought a lot on the lake - about 15 minutes from the village of Westport, just up the hill from Bedford Mills. I spent several weekends at the lake every summer from the time I was 12 or 13 - with my parents and brothers. Sometimes I would go myself and hang out with Brenda and the twins (when they were babies). Ken built a small cabin for their family to sleep in - while he was building the big cottage. We slept in that same tent trailer that took us to Edmonton a few years before.

Fast forward 10 years.

Randy and I graduated from Tyndale in April of 1980 and we had six weeks off before we would start our summer job directing a kid’s camp near Penetang, Ontario. In the fall we would begin full time ministry as associate pastor in Orillia at First Baptist Church. We had six weeks to kill. What to do?

My parents had recently bought the cottage next to Ken and Bren’s but had not yet winterized it so Randy and I asked them if we could live in it for the six weeks. They said yes!

No plumbing.

No heat.

No running water.

We snuggled in that bare bones cottage for 6 weeks and it was some of the finest weeks I’ve ever spent. We woke when the sun came up and went to bed went it got dark. Don’t judge us but we jumped into the freezing cold May waters of Devil lake to bathe. At that time of the year there was not a soul around. We canoed that lake every morning. Hours and hours. We watched the loons building their nest. We heard their haunting cries in the night if a predator happened to come near. We tried to get close to the turtles sunning on a log. One day we counted twenty or more of them warming themselves in the sunshine. In the afternoons we sat in the warm spring sunshine on the deck but if the rains came, we hunkered down in the cottage - under warm quilts. We drank cowboy coffee. We bbq’d. We got our water from the pump at the bottom of the hill near the little white Anglican church. We made quick trips to the outhouse. During black fly week, we hardly went outside.

All of a sudden it was June. The loon parents had two eggs in their nest. One of them was constantly on that nest while the other fished and offered warning calls. The whip-poor-wills came back and the whipped each evening. One night we counted 111 calls. Please stop. We built fires and sat for hours under the stars - looking up to the heavens and talking about what it will be like to be there one day. Randy played his guitar and sang John Denver songs to me - night after night. We didn’t have a transistor radio so we had no clue who was winning the Stanley Cup playoffs. Maybe once a week we went into town for groceries and got some news. There were no cell phones in those days so a few times my parents drove out from Kingston to check on us to be sure we were “still alive”!

All too soon those magical 6 weeks came to an end and off we were to the big world of full time jobs - leaving behind our college days.

Soon we would add three sons to our family - 1982, 1983 and 1984 and we would continue to trek to Devil lake for the next 16 years. We would spend a week or two every summer, School break in March and time over Christmas/New Year’s - at “the lake”. We never tired of doing the same things with the boys that we did during our 6 weeks of bliss - after graduation from Seminary. We never tired of watching the sun sparkling on the clear, blue water. We never tired of seeing that big, old sun go down in the big western sky. We never tired of hearing laughter and splashes as kids and parents jumped off the rocks into the chilly lake. (I would wait until mid July for the lake to warm up.) We never tired of fishing for bass with the frogs the boys captured from the pond at the end of the lake. We never tired of canoeing each morning - spying on the loons nest and checking out those turtles on the logs. We never tired of late afternoon naps on the couches on the porch. We never tired of watching the shooting stars each August.

I always had a lump in my throat when we packed up the van and headed home.

I’m grateful for Devil Lake. I’m grateful for the beauty of the place. I’m grateful for the years God granted us to be there. There is no other place in the world quite like it.