This summer, my wife and I and our four-year-old daughter Iris visited Ely, Minn., near one of my favorite places, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
One day we explored a tiny trout lake nestled in a red pine forest where granite outcrops—what Iris calls mountains—expose themselves graciously, and ochre pine needles carpet the forest floor. Clambering around the shore, Iris could barely contain her glee. “It’s like that Neverland place,” our Peter Pan fan exclaimed.
For the rest of our stay near Ely, I thought about my daughter’s metaphor and the role of this Neverland Place in my own life.
Why are the Boundary Waters like Neverland? Well, as Iris would say, it’s a place you never have to grow up, silly. The tableau of lakes and boreal forest is so rich with sensory delights that I can be satisfied just being there, without longing to be elsewhere. A rare place indeed.
Now that my daughter is old enough to ride in a canoe, my trips to Ely aren’t that different from when I first came here as a teenager. Or so I can tell myself.
I love the place. It’s the country I long for when I’m cooped up somewhere I don’t want to be. My daughter’s obsession with Peter Pan, the little boy who never wanted to grow up, helped me understand why.
I’m Chris Fink, and that’s my perspective