My parents lake house is a fairly typical lake house. A soft grassy lawn spans the 60 or so feet that separate my parents porch steps from the lakeside steps. The lawn is usually soft and cool, but if you venture more than ten feet south from the main thoroughfare, your feet will meet some decidedly unpleasant pine needles, dried and stiffened by the summer sun. At the end of the lawn, three steps, then the shore path. The three steps are made from three large lannon stones, or flagstones, each one supported by a riser also made of the same stone. The top rock butts against the green grass of the lawn, and makes a whimsical clanking sound when stepped on, and if rocks could talk, this is what I assume they’d sound like. The three stone steps lead to a graceful, yet overwhelmingly simple, lannon stone pathway that extends the 55′ width of my parents shore path. This path leads to the pier, where warm, dimpled flagstone gives way to white painted wood. It’s an ethereal transition.
The teetering in the top step is owed to a construction flaw that is inherent when dry-stacking stone. Then again, the lovely rocking of that top stone is probably owed to the fact that the stone masons who built those steps were not stone masons at all, rather the chore was undertaken by me and my older brother one weekday about 20 years ago. My older brother was probably in high school, I in junior high. We didn’t exactly work well together at the time, but the result of our novice effort is still visible to anyone walking the shore path.
Lannon stone is an interesting stone. It was originally quarried (in modern history anyway) by Mr. William Lannon, in an area that is known today as Lannon, Wisconsin. To this day, one of the finest purveyor of lannon stone in the United States is Halquist Stone, located in Sussex, Wisconsin. It should be no surprise to learn that the summer we installed the lannon stone steps and garden walls, my father drove his old red station wagon with trailer in tow, and we drove home from Sussex dragging several tons of shock-busting lannon stone.
While the aesthetics of lannon stone fit my eye quite nicely, it’s the feeling of lannon stone that I really love. Rock is not usually associated with having a great “feel”. Angular and hard, the thought of walking on most rocks isn’t exactly one that most people day dream about. Our entire lives, my brothers and I have walked over the grassy lawn, down the rocky steps, over the shore path, down the white pier, and gone swimming. On particularly hot days, the walk would turn into a run once we hit the pier, we’d shed our shirts and throw our towels in one fluid motion, and run until we dove right off the end of the pier. And when the swimming was done, we’d walk, with wet feet and draped towels, back up the pier and onto the warm lannon stone path. Our feet leaving wet tracks on the stones, providing momentary clues that gave away our ultimate destination.
Those same stones are now visible. Freed from the winter snow and ice, and once again, they’re warming. Eleven weeks from today is the start of my 32nd summer at the lake. A summer where there will be two more sets of watery footprints on those smooth lannon stones as my children run the familiar route down the grassy lawn and onto the white pier. The sun will warm those rocks, and there’s little doubt in my mind that my kids will appreciate their warmth as much as I always have. Eleven weeks from today will probably be just any other Friday for those who don’t own vacation homes here, but for those who do, eleven weeks from today represents the most important Friday on the calendar. The Friday where warm lannon stones and white piers await and the summer looks so young, so fresh, and so full of water splashed promise.