Frog’s Leap

Frog’s Leap

Sometimes I close my eyes and I am there again—at Frog’s Leap, my grandparents’ cabin tucked into the edge of a small lily-pad filled lake, where the pines lean toward the water as if trying to touch their own reflection. The air smells of pine, sun, and lake water, and for a moment, it feels like time slows, like the world pauses to let me breathe in the memory.

I remember mornings at the cabin, the way the sunlight pooled on the wooden porch, the smell of flour and butter drifting from the kitchen. Grandma’s heart-shaped waffles, golden and warm, stacked high and dripping with syrup, were more than breakfast—they were a small ritual of love. Fingers sticky, syrup on our cheeks, cousins at my side, and the swans calling across the lake. It all felt infinite, as if nothing outside that little cabin could ever touch us.

The rowboat waits in memory, gently rocking against the dock, oars glinting in the sunlight. I can still feel the water lapping against my hands, turtles and frogs peeking from the shallows, curious, unafraid. How small we were, how vast the lake. The world felt endless in those quiet, drifting moments.

Behind the cabin, the tallest pine tree in the world stretched impossibly skyward. I climbed it, hands gripping rough bark, wind tugging at my hair, heart pounding. From the top, I could see the lake glimmering like a mirror, the forest rolling endlessly, the cabin shrinking beneath me, smoke curling from the chimney. Sitting there, I remember feeling like I could hold the whole world in my hands, and wishing I could stay forever, suspended in that perfect moment between sky and water.

Evenings were softer, slower. Frogs leaping from rock to rock, turtles slipping back into the lake. Campfires crackling, sparks drifting into the dark, marshmallows melting on sticks, and Grandpa’s stories curling into the night air. The scent of pine smoke, the warmth of family, the quiet laughter of cousins. And then, the radio would hum with Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor’s voice threading through the night, tying the world together in its gentle, familiar rhythm. I remember the weightless peace of lying in a blanket on the porch, the night cool on my skin, feeling held, protected, seen.

Now, years later, I can’t step back into Frog’s Leap except in memory, and yet it lives in me. I can smell the cedar, taste the syrup, hear the swans calling across the water. I can feel the rowboat rocking, the rough bark of the pine under my fingers, the firelight flickering on my cousins’ faces. Every time I remember it, the world softens, the noise fades, and for a moment, I am ten again, small, fearless, tethered to nothing and everything at once.

There is a longing in these memories—not sadness, exactly, but a sweet ache for a time when life felt infinite, simple, and safe. For mornings that smelled like syrup and sun, afternoons that carried the gentle slap of water against a rowboat, evenings of firelight and stories, and nights when the radio hummed us to sleep. Frog’s Leap is not just a place, but a memory in my heart, a quiet ache that reminds me who I was, who I am, and what it means to be home.

And I long for it still—the smell, the sound, the warmth of family and lake, and the endless, unspoken magic of a childhood spent at the water’s edge, where everything felt possible and forever.