Even before the garage sale opened last weekend, Joe emailed me about the Minn Kota trolling motor. His mother lives in a nearby Seattle suburb and could pay for and pick it up. Contingent upon promise to refund, receipt of sale and horsepower. From the picture he knew he was getting a great Craigslist deal. And he was.

This motor was a ’bargain cave’ deal during what was hoped to be an annual couples trip to KC. My husband knew that we would be getting a hand-me-down, patched Jon boat from the ranch. It was the proudest of purchases amidst the normal shopping, eating and drinking weekend.

Jon became our ‘portal’ to Summer. Just a short walk down the hill from our house, we would tote our poles, bait, hounds and cooler and end the evening or begin the weekend on Thomas Lake. Sometimes we didn’t fish, we would just troll. Almost every trip, we would circle the lake only to find Bandoo the cat awaiting a pick up. She would happily nestle on a bench or on the floor, Leela the GSD would assume her position on the bow, Mowgli cautiously would glue himself to the middle bench with me. The trolling lulled us all.

Our ‘master angler’ neighbor Bruce created a ‘pad’ for Jon with a winch to pull him out of the water and keep him ‘safe’. Another part of this peace-creating process. The boat held us all and for most of one Summer, it also housed a Garter snake. (In a future post I’ll share my husband’s grade school story about the King Cobra on his playground…) How convenient that the one inch drain plug was ground level into a enclosed ‘home’ (which also serves as a seat for the operator of the motor.) “What should we do? How do we get it out?”

“We don’t.”

So for the duration of our trolls, just below the motor arm, the head with the little red tongue would ‘check in’ about the status.

Amidst all of this, being on the water shifted our minds to ‘off’. We all were peaceful, centering and connecting. It was a time to just be. We could not be more thankful for the hand-me-down, the bargain purchase and the stories resulting from this special life on our Iowa acreage.

Joe emailed me the day after our sale to say the motor works great. I trust he will create similar memories on Jon with the power of Minn Kota.