Margaret Calloway

They need a kitchen that works, a bed that is genuinely comfortable, and firewood that is actually dry.

I bought this property in the fall of 2009 from a retired schoolteacher named Harold Voss, who had run it as a fishing camp since the early 1970s. There were eight cabins then, most of them in rough shape, and a dock that listed badly to the east. I had been working as a landscape architect in Minneapolis for eleven years and had spent most of my vacations driving north to rent someone else's cabin on someone else's lake. When Harold's daughter posted the listing on a regional real estate board, I drove up on a Thursday, walked the shoreline twice, and made an offer before I drove home. I have never been entirely sure that was a rational decision. I am entirely sure it was the right one.

The first three years were mostly construction. I hired a crew from Ely to re-side the original eight cabins in northern white cedar milled at a small operation outside Cook, Minnesota. We added four more cabins between 2011 and 2014, each one set a little further into the tree line so that no cabin looks directly into another. I learned a lot about what guests actually need during those years. They do not need a hot tub. They do not need a game room. They need a kitchen that works, a bed that is genuinely comfortable, a porch with a chair that faces the water, and firewood that is actually dry. Getting those four things right took longer than I expected.

I am Margaret Calloway, and I have been running Northwind Cedar Point since I bought the property from Harold Voss in the fall of 2009. Before this, I spent eleven years as a landscape architect at a firm in Minneapolis, mostly working on commercial projects that paid well and meant very little to me. I grew up in Duluth, which means I have always had a complicated relationship with the cold and an uncomplicated love of the water. I am currently reading my way through a stack of books about the ecology of northern Minnesota lakes, which is either research or procrastination, depending on the week. In winter I cross-country ski the trails behind the property and make a lot of soup. I am working on a short guide to Birchwood Lake for guests, which has been "almost finished" for about two years now.