Riding a bike is not difficult. It’s easy, really. You sit on the seat, you pedal, it’s really not a big deal. I’m not so sure what every 5 year old is struggling with. You just get on, sit, and pedal. It’s so easy. But that’s the thing about balance- when you have it, you don’t really think about it all that much. I’m 34, and I can ride a bike like the dickens. At 5, I’m guessing I was thinking less about how boring riding a bike is and instead wondering what exactly makes this balance thing so exceedingly difficult. When you don’t have any balance, that’s when you most keenly recognize a need for it.
I have exhausted thousands of words mocking the deficiencies of competing resort destinations. I have done this to Door County and to Harbor Country, and I don’t do it to parts in Indiana or parts in Iowa because it isn’t fair to them. But that’s how it is at these other locations too- at Green Lake and New Buffalo and Fish Creek- they are all wielding really sharp knifes all the while I lean against a fence post tapping the butt of my very shiny gun. It’s not their fault they can’t compete with Lake Geneva. They try so hard. They do! They put goats on roofs and they enlist washed up celebrities to talk in hushed tones about them, they do this but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is not what they have, it’s what they don’t have.
And what they don’t have is what Lake Geneva excels at: Balance. There is no balance to be found in a destination that turns off the lights in September and forgets to turn them on again until June. This isn’t artsy, this isn’t clever, this isn’t quiet. This is desolate. This is a lack of balance, if seasonal. To have a destination rife with flair shops that sell nothing of actual lasting value, this isn’t a vibrant, diverse mercantile, this is a one trick pony. And it’s a very old pony that I never liked much anyway.
On a crowded 90 degree Saturday on Geneva Lake, it’s easy to crave solitude. I crave it at those moments, I really do. But on a Sunday night when the sun calms and fades, I find it. I don’t need to look further than the bow of my boat, assuming it’s pointed towards the setting horizon, I just look up and it’s there. The noise of a fun weekend is replaced by the quiet of a still evening, and on a Sunday evening it’s there and then again it’s waiting for me on a Monday and on Tuesday? Shucks, on a Tuesday it’s there for the entire day. I found what I wanted, and I found it in the same place that I’ve always thought to first look.
On the quiet Fridays in October, there is peace and there is stillness, but there isn’t isolation, unless that’s what I’m looking for. If I want to make a fire on a cold Friday and keep it burning until Sunday, then that’s what I’m going to do. I won’t need to wave at any neighbors, because there might not be any neighbors to wave at. But if I’m hungry for a bite I needn’t drive miles to find it, and water bottles are common currency here. I’ll just drive to town where the same restaurant that served my favorite sandwich in July is happy to serve it to me again on that cold night in October. There is no closing time for life here, there’s just a reshuffling of priorities, a steady balancing act that works as well in summer as it does in winter, and that balance is the envy of every other vacation town everywhere.
While destinations across the Midwest prepare to close down and rest, Geneva does no such thing. Sure Saturday boat rides are soon to be replaced by Saturday apple picking, but this isn’t something to be sad about, it’s something to celebrate. When the apples fall and the last core hits the just frozen ground, there will be more for us to do, and we’ll be happy to do it together. We won’t have to look out from under our covers and wonder where everyone went. We won’t have to think about our favorite salad and bide time until we can have it again. We won’t have to read handwritten signs in shop windows that tell us we’ll be seen again next year, and we won’t suffer the smiley faces that they’ll write under those notes either. Because we won’t have to. Communities can be alive one month and dead the next, and while most will celebrate them while they’re alive few will remember them when they are dead. Geneva never fades, it just changes, and it’s changing right about now. It’s another fall at the lake, and winter is sure to follow. But no matter the season, we’re Lake Geneva gosh darnit, and we’re not closing down for anyone anytime soon.