Liann Bobechko

I know from experience how great it is to be kid at the cottage. Growing up at my extended family’s cottage near Huntsville, I remember the feeling of endless summers at the lake and the delirious freedom of a whole day stretched out in front of me.

There are memories that feel so fresh and real I can climb inside them and poke around for hours: Hiking through the woods with my grandparents, playing on the swim raft until I was shivering and my lips were blue (and then being bundled up in a huge towel and snugggled by an aunt or my mom), playing cards until the bullfrogs were chug-a-rumming. We had the requisite shelves of field guides, the groundhogs that we would catch scurrying away every morning as we opened the back door, or the bats scuttling out of the attic at dusk.

Every minute of the day, it seems, inspired a question. Learning about nature and the environment (one of the areas I work on as an editor here at Cottage Life) couldn’t be avoided at our cottage. As a new parent of a toddler, I am sometimes in a terrible rush to share my experiences with her, but I know I have to let her discover her own passions and pastimes at the cottage at her own pace.

A cottage day seems filled with keeping our daughter from chewing on batteries I hadn’t noticed were stored on a low shelf, or eating the gravel driveway, stone by stone. But, we also get to hear her point at the sound of a chickadee overhead and say “burd,” or crouch in the water to peer under the dock. Our little busy body keeps me and my husband hopping, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

-Liann Bobechko, Senior Associate Editor, Cottage Life magazine