8. Nature’s Way
My sister and I and cousin Loretta weren’t the only family members who hadn’t abandoned Sandy Pond. Sandra, the cousin who, as a child, used to bunk with my sister in the small cottage, still loved the place. Well, why not? She and her husband, Paul Grecco, had found a secluded cottage, accessible only by boat. The cottage also was fairly new. It had to be because it was located on the west shore of the pond along a treed strip I’m sure didn’t exist in the 1940s.

When I was a kid, the word “fragile” wasn’t in my vocabulary. Even after it was, I didn’t apply it to a piece of land, a hill of sand or a body of water. Back in the ‘50s we thought most things would last forever. Short of nuclear war, that is. But that’s a whole other story.

Step back one decade. We’re in the small cottage during one of those memorable Lake Ontario storms. The rain stops, but wind still howls. We look north, way up the pond where the last sandhill falls to earth, landing about three feet above lake level. From there to the channel is a gently arched mound of sand, probably 200 feet wide, almost a mile long.

That's where it is happening – Lake Ontario waves so high they are crashing over the sandstrip, into the pond. We’re entertained, even amused in a wow! look at that! sort of way. We're like people who stand on the Atlantic Ocean shore to watch waves during a hurricane.

The storm’s implications don’t register. The sand strip is Mother Nature’s Play-Doh, constantly re-shaped by the awesome combination of wind and water.

AHEAD TO 1974: A cover story in the Syracuse Herald-American’s Empire magazine tells of problems Sandy Pond property owners have encountered due to the rising lake. The cover photo is a man standing at the end of a short rock wall he built in a failed attempt to keep the lake from swallowing an estimated 80 percent of his property. Property along the sand strip.

I had sympathy for those who owned cottages on the east shore of the pond, two miles away. Some were old, established cottages on lots that had never before been attacked by water. I could understand their anguish as inch by inch their property disappeared.

But that man on the rock, what was he thinking when he bought 100 feet of sand? And the man who sold it, should I see him about buying a lowcountry swamp for my Carolina dream house? So I felt nothing for the man on the rock. He should have known better. So should the people who built cottages on the dunes north of Sandy Island Beach. Especially the people whose cottage eventually went sand-skiing down the hill.

By the end of the ‘70s, the lake receded; the sandstrip (or split, as locals call it) re-appeared and Sandy Pond displayed the results of its latest makeover. The Empire magazine article had – without explanation – illustrated the process in two striking photographs.

One, taken in 1936, showed a bare sand mound where, 10 year later, the waves overflowed while we watched from the small cottage.

In a 1974 photo, that mound is much higher, wider and thick with trees. It’s where someone built the cottage my cousin Sandra and her husband rented in the late ‘70s. The cottage was tucked in among those trees, birches and pines about 20 feet tall.

I ENVIED SANDRA and her family. Their cottage was clean and comfortable, its kitchen well-applianced. It was too far from the nearest powerline, so the cottage's electricity came from an oil-fueled generator. No problem.

Best of all, the cottage provided easy access to the two attractions that made Sandy Pond so much fun. Out front, about 50 feet away, was a dock that extended into the pond. In back was a secluded Lake Ontario beach, just beyond a couple of small sand dunes – dunes that hadn’t existed 30 years earlier.

At first glance I knew that cottage was where we’d have our perfect vacation.

But first we had to have our all-time, rock-bottom worst. That came in 1981 as a result of a last-minute decision. We had skipped the previous summer because our daughter Meridith arrived in August. We hemmed and hawed for weeks about that 1981 vacation, then made arrangements to share a Sandy Pond cottage with my sister and her family. Summer was underway. Was a cottage available for the two weeks we wanted?

That it was available for every week through Labor Day should have told me something. Saying “We’ll take it!” is maybe number three on my all-time list of incredibly stupid mistakes. The place smelled of urine, every surface was sticky and your sneakers went THWUP! THWUP! THWUP! when you walked. We counted 10 million ants in the kitchen alone. Appropriately, it rained 10 of our 14 days. That my second marriage survived made me believe in miracles.

We didn’t quit, though we did take a break in 1983.

FINALLY, IN 1984, we made it happen, but not without some difficulty. Sandra and Paul Grecco chose not to go to Sandy Pond that year. They gave us the name of the owner of the perfect college, but he told us he preferred to sell, not rent. No thanks, I said.

As June approached, with no buyer in sight, he had a change of heart. He and his wife would use it in July, he’d rent it out in August. We had our two weeks.

This time I’d need a powerboat instead of a flat-bottomed rowboat and a tiny outboard. We’d be making several food runs that would require trips back and forth to our car which would be parked three miles away.

The boat my cousin and her husband had used wasn’t theirs; it belonged to a friend I didn’t know. None of the Sandy Pond marinas rented powerboats, so I turned to the Yellow Pages where I found an ad for a marina on the south shore of Oneida Lake, 40 miles from the pond. To my surprise, the owner agreed to deliver a boat to Green Point Marina.

With the boat came with a towline and waterskis. None of us had any experience waterskiing or handling a powerboat. I wasn't about to go out on Lake Ontario and I wasn’t sure anyone could get psyched about doing something in the pond that surely would drop them in six feet of seaweed-infested water with a mucky bottom that could suck you in like quicksand. But the kids did – psyche themselves up AND sink, always bobbing up for another try. It didn't take long for Laura (top of the page) to get the hang of it; I wondered why I hadn't thought of this a few years earlier.

I'VE HEARD about a woman who so loved Sandy Pond that she told her family that upon her death she wanted to be cremated, with her remains scattered over her favorite fishing spot. I understand her feelings. Any Pondaholic would. We're like members of a cult, irrationally devoted to a state of mind that we found at a certain place at a certain age . . . in a certain era. This may be particularly true for people who grew up in the 1950s.

However, I do not share that woman's feelings about Sandy Pond fishing. To the very end we had no luck, and in 1984 we went all over the pond looking for fish. Any kind of fish. The biggest we saw during our two weeks was off-limits. It was the male bullhead that patrolled our area, protecting his young.

Oh, there was something larger nearby, but we never saw it, only the sad evidence of its presence. That evidence was a family of baby ducks. One day there were six, the next day there were five. Then four . . .

But we hadn't gone to Sandy Pond to fish. We'd gone there for that state of mind. And we all found it, even Meridith, who, at age 4, appointed herself camp director, leading us on nature walks, hikes to the beach, to the dock to fish or for a ride in the boat, or on a search for the chipmunks we’d see from time to time.

My wife found it, too, and even forgave me for our 1981 misadventure that had earned the code name, Empire of the Ants.

Finally, we had it – the perfect vacation.

Most remarkably, 1984 was the first time I’d ever spent two weeks at Sandy Pond without at least one gully-washing, teeth-rattling, nail-biting storm. I didn’t even feel a raindrop until the final morning while I was taking the boat back to the marina. Or perhaps it was a tear – for I sensed our Sandy Pond era had come to an end. My son was about to go off to college, my older daughter was a high school junior. There'd be other things for them to do in the summers ahead.

It seemed a good time to quit.

After all, you can’t improve on perfect.