Did you look up the phone numbers of the boys you had a crush on? The information was all there in the phonebook, their dad’s name, their street and their number. So a group of my girlfriends gathered, and we decided by committee if one of us should call. We used my best friend’s basement phone, providing with us much needed privacy for this all-important call, and a bonus was the long cord, so we could sit in her twirly chairs and spin while we talked. But calling this “talking” was a stretch. I called Bill and said, “hello”…………. and then an awkward silence, and he said, “What are you doing now?”

I can’t answer that what I am doing is “twirling”, so I say, “Nothing”. The witty conversation I had planned is not going so well. We actually are in silence for a while and then he plays me some music from his record player and that becomes my new favorite song.

I have been in love with the telephone forever. I loved dialing numbers; I loved the weight of the big black phone at my grandma’s house in Oak Park. I remember her number started with two letters it was EU6-2008, EU stood for Euclid. Our number was HI7-1578 or Hickory 7-1578. That word created a sense of place. We had a cream-colored phone upstairs and harvest gold in our kitchen.

I liked talking on the phone to my friends and I could not understand that my sister did not feel the same way. I heard her answer the phone once and it was her friend and she said. “What do you want?” I almost fell over; no one really wanted anything they just wanted to talk.

With the ubiquitous cell phone, the phonebook has fallen out of use. I brought all my big Chicago phone books to my classroom when I taught Printmaking, it was perfect to scrape used ink onto the page and then discard it, like a big fat post-it tablet. I realized I needed a phonebook last summer as I sought to connect to some old time residents on Long Lake. Luckily I found my parents 1990’s phonebook. Thank goodness not much has changed up here, as all the people I searched for were listed. In the tiny town of Shell Lake there were two people with the same last name and first initial, but this was not a problem because when I called party number 1 they were the cousin to party number 2 and asked me how I was and what I wanted.

One of the first movies I saw in the theatre was Bye Bye Birdie. I was only in grammar school but something must have stuck because I went on to think I was living in the telephone song.

If the phone rang in our house when I was in junior high, I would sprint to pick up first, but pause for a moment and then say “hello”.

One of the new joys in my life has been meeting and hiking with a group of women in northern Wisconsin. As we arrive at our weekly hike meeting spot I am struck by how beautiful all the women look. They are like a gorgeous flock of birds, hair colors of silver, white, grey and brown all standing and chatting at the mouth of a boreal forest where we will all soon walk. They have lovely, radiant, healthy skin, smiles that reflect the joys and sorrows of rich lives and really great hiking shoes. These women are fit and they share a strong bond of love of the woods and water.

I have been coming to Long Lake Wisconsin my entire life, but we could never tear ourselves away from a day of swimming to go very far, but this new life provides time and so I have ventured to Hayward, Grand View, Seeley, Brule and Copper Falls. I didn’t know about the North Country Trail, a path that begins in North Dakota and takes a hiker all the way to New York. We walked several sections of the trail this summer and marveled at the views of a distant Lake Superior.   We hiked on shiny slippery stones and noticed bright red mushrooms, we walked on country roads past cows who gazed back with mild curiosity at this band of heavy breathing women making their way up a hilly ascent. We climbed up St. Peter’s Dome, the highest point in the Chequamegon National Forest, and tripped over rope-thick roots, slid down the hills of the Birkie ski trails on muddy grass rivers, we walked old railroad beds and roads dotted with summer homes, these were just some of our paths. It was a real treat for a mostly-city girl to hike breathlessly into the woods.

Lunch with a group of 40 plus woman is a sight to behold. A group of “regulars” at Marie’s in Stone Lake peeked in the door only to have to put their fingers in their ears to block the din. The lunchtime conversation is fun and necessary. Many women had previous lives of city life, workplace and neighbors, the camaraderie is vital. We often picnic in the woods or make our way to a local bar or patio for the lunchtime special. The hosts of the walk provide desserts and I will admit to smuggling a cookie home in a napkin like a rare jewel.

I await the winter and hope to take a few hikes with the group and I can only imagine the glory of the woods in winter. I’ll claim my Nordic roots and beef up my winter wardrobe and be ready to go where they lead.

“After stumbling a long time over impossible trails   

you are up on top.   

Hardship didn’t crush you, you trod it   

down, climbed higher.”

Olav Hauge

“THERE is no drug — recreational or prescription — capable of inducing the tranquil euphoria brought on by swimming.” so says Richard Friedman, professor of psychiatry. I knew this, but appreciated an affirmation.

Kicking as hard as I can and moving through the water until I’m out of breath, this is what I need to do. Is it the rhythm of my breathing or the feeling of lightness that makes the swimming experience so curative?

The snail shell bobbing past my nose as I swim in the lake does not alarm me. I look down and can see the bottom almost 10 feet away. The wispy weed that has wrapped around my wrist is a charm bracelet that will come with me on my swim across the bay. Hello loon, heron and other members of my swim club, join me as I go.

In contrast to my lake swim is my city swim, cool blue pool up high in the sky, city view and lane markers. I swim my lap and turn and head back where I came, my path is straight. I’m alone in clear water.

The need to swim has always been strong, but never more so than this week, when my darling daughter Emma is having surgery. I am waiting.  From the top of a tall building in Hyde Park I look out over the immense span of Lake Michigan, the water is a reminder of that calming effect of swimming.

The first thing I ever taught was swimming. The results were satisfying and immediate. Clinging, blue-lipped children all learned to swim. They overcame fear and took off on their own across the pool. I think of all those kids and summon their bravery. Emma and I will swim across the lake when this day is behind us, and we will enjoy the water together.

Our daughters have gone back to the city; they had long ago left the “nest”, but were up visiting and saw the new cabin for the first time. It is a paradigm shift. We are still enjoying the same lake and woods, but from a new home on the shore. There are ceiling fans, quiet stairs and privacy.

Kevin and I watched the loons this spring and from a safe distance saw their nest hidden along the shore. They carry their young on their back for a while and now all are swimming on their own. That is what we aimed for as parents and it is a funny mix of feelings when they swim on their own. There is a longing that they are gone, swam out too far, but a pride that says, “look at them go”.

The sound of the loon is unmistakable and their banter is magical. Some of these sounds are the tremolo, a wavering call given when a loon is alarmed or to say “hey I’m here”. The yodel is the male loon’s territorial claim. Each male has his own signature yodel, but it is the wail, the haunting call that loons give back and forth to figure out each other’s location, that I most associate with Long Lake and the north woods.

I’m fairly certain our daughters have heard us make all of these sounds, they might not have been sure what we were doing, so they would ask questions like, “Are you crazy?’ But it was just us being parents and trying to send them off into the world. Thank goodness they like to visit us and bring their new-formed adult lives into our world. We love their friends as our own children and enjoy hearing where they have all landed. It is an amazing process to watch.

So this morning they are back in the city of the big shoulders. Chicago is our home too, and the contrast of woods and city is exciting and shocking at the same time. We feel lucky to know them both. But for now, my kayak is waiting at the shore and that loon is circling.

Zumba in northern Wisconsin already seems so out of place. Salsa, Merengue and cheese curds don’t appear to co-exist, but that is my own narrow view of how this area of woods and lakes should look. I have overlooked how widely the world of music and pop culture can spread.

As a teen vacationing in Wisconsin we would try late at night to have our transistor radios pick up WLS in Chicago, so we could feel that connection to home, city and music. But the world is a smaller place now and kids up here can be working on their family farm, driving the tractor, headphones on and cranking up the same tunes as city teens riding on the CTA.

But this strange coexistence became more apparent to me as I was twirling the wrong way in my Zumba class in Shell Lake, Wisconsin. This town of 1,329 people sits on the shore of a big round lake shaped like, what else, a seashell. It has a tiny lake hotel and bar and is the Washburn county seat, and just outside of town is a pole barn that has been built for the town health club. It is new, corrugated steel, and clean, and the view from the windows is a lovely field and Auctions 4U, where farm families bid farewell to their belongings.

I’m waiting for the music to begin, stretching and looking in the mirrors that reflect back the women around me wearing the usual black leggings and  bright colored athletic tops. We begin with a few salsa-type dances, and then a song comes on that I know from the art room at Oak Park and River Forest High School, an artist named Jason Derulo is singing Talk Dirty to Me.

Been around the world, don’t speak the language

But your booty don’t need explaining

All I really need to understand is

When you talk dirty to me

I can’t believe I know these lyrics and I’m dancing and trying to follow our teacher who has some great hip hop moves for us, but I’m experiencing a weird disconnect. As I look out the window onto this pastoral vista in this tiny lake town, I think about how we are all dancing to moves that I envision in an urban setting. But perhaps more unsettling for me is how I’m distracted by the music and the dancing and not paying attention to the lyrics, which is common says a music psychologist, Dr. Victoria Williams. We are less troubled by misogynistic lyrics when we are not reading them, but dancing and singing.

What! I consider myself a feminist. I went to see Betty Friedan trounce all over Phyllis Schlafly, and I tore up my daughters’ copy of Cosmopolitan magazine in a rant about female body image. My mom and grandma taught me to be a self-reliant girl who had her own checkbook.

I don’t like the lyrics, but I do like the beat and the way it makes you want to dance to the music. There are of course bigger social issues here about why these lyrics, and who wrote them. But I believe there are some reasons we respond to certain art forms that can be difficult to explain. And for today, in Shell Lake Wisconsin,  I’m grateful for the smallness of the world and I’m having a great time dancing to this song.