We all engage in it. A very common mistake. It’s not a mistake like it would be to pay someone to tattoo barbed wire around our biceps, but it’s a mistake nonetheless. I write to you from this desk every other day, and I write to you as if I know the entire lake. As if I know every nook and cranny and every point and bay and every gravel road and paved street. I write like I know, as it comes to Geneva, it all. You listen, you read, and you, too, explore. You think about the lake and you think about what it is and how it looks and you think that you know it all too, and if not all of it, well then certainly most of it. The truth today is that none of us know the lake as well as we think. It’s a big lake. Our minds are small.
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And this is why November is so important. In December, we can get to know the lake. The lake is still then, the activity gone excepting a few brave fishermen that drag lures slowly through the depths, the piers out and the lake a glassy reflection of everything we think it should be. We can explore then. We can hike the shore path and legally trespass through front lawns and peek behind houses and see things that we didn’t know were there. We could do these things in December, but December has but one fatal flaw. It can be very cold in December. Like freezing cold. Like Manitoba cold. If you’ve never been there, trust me on this one, it’s a cold you don’t ever want. December is to exploring what bicycles are to fishing, carbon fiber frame or not.
November on the other hand, November is a month where even a soft guy like me can do some exploring. November isn’t like October and it’s nothing like December, but it’s so much better than August if you’re looking to actually accomplish something. August is a show. It’s busy here then, the lake is busy and pretty and between pretty boats and pretty girls and pretty big fish it’s nearly impossible to focus on the lake. November is free from distraction. There’s nothing going on, and no fisherman in a Lund could ever distract someone from their goal if their goal is to discover what they cannot see during summer.
A goal of mine here, on this site, and in my every day work is to educate. Any agent can be reactionary and make fancy fonted proclamations, but is that some sort of valuable advice? I don’t think it is. I think it’s lame. So while I educate here and educate if you’ll take a ride in my car with me around the lake, there is an education that I cannot give you. That education is one of personal preference. If you’re going to buy a car, it’s nice to know what Dan Neil thinks of that particular car. The gas mileage is sort of important. The size of the engine matters some. But what really matters is how the color looks under the sun and how it takes a corner. Personal preference is what matters far beyond the nuts and bolts, and even though I’d love to shape your preferences for you this is something I cannot do. In order to understand this market and this lake, you must explore.
Vacationing here during August for a week is not the time to explore. That’s a time to be captivated. There isn’t must subjectivity to a summer day at the lake. It’s impossible to resist it. And with this, people give in and they buy a house on a Saturday that they first learned about on a Tuesday. To be a buyer in August is to act quickly and sometimes irrationally, but to be a November leaf kicker and a December buyer? Well that’s pure genius.
So for now it’s November. It’s time to explore. It’s time to learn about little bays and small points that you never knew existed because in August they were masked with piers and shiny objects. On a gray day in November, with some boots and gloves on, you can learn more about the lake in a three hour walk than you every could during a 7 day summer vacation. If you’re here doing this work it’s obvious you already like the lake. The goal here, on this blog and on that shore path, is to find what you love. Whether that’s an association home or a stretch of the lake that fits your eye, now is precisely the time to find that spot.Nove