Boat Freedom

So there I was...motoring up to Bluff Island in the Thousand Island chain this past August in the dingy.  I had heard that there was this amazing boutique and curiosity shop in a quaint building on the small island and it did not disappoint.  I knew Kim would love this place so we took the dingy one morning from where Eventide was anchored in the cove of a neighboring island.  What made this business, called Boateak, extra special was that it could only be reached by boat.  When arriving you didn't look for a parking space but rather a place at their dock to tie up.  Same thing was true when Kim and I visited Heart Island, from an earlier blog, a day or two later.  Coming to the dock in our own vessel to tour this wonder was a big part of the experience.  This way of doing things started for me when I was just a young boy growing up on a lake in southern Massachusetts.  My family had a little aluminum boat with a 5 1/2 hp Evinrude motor on it and this was my floating freedom.  The general store on the other side of the lake could be reached by boat and my parents were always sending me there to buy milk or bread.  We had a place called The Nook with it's own dock for pizza pickup and a marina that I was always navigating to because it sold my favorite candy.  Visiting my friends meant jumping in the boat and motoring to their cottages in various locations around the lake.  It was like the feeling a teenager gets when they earn their driver's license and with it the realm of possibilities.  On the lake, this was happening for me at 10 years old.  It is no wonder I feel so free when I'm on the water.  It has been ingrained in me from an early age.  If I could have gone to work everyday by boat I may not have retired.