THIS IS ENOUGH

A sunny summer morning at Isle Royale’s Daisy Farm dock. I peek out the window of our thirty-eight foot trawler Mazurka to see our three kids—ages nine, six and four—at the other end of the dock, leaping around with excitement. They chat up two women who are pumping drinking water, heavy backpacks beside them. A celebratory camaraderie exists between backpackers and boaters. Lots of people have talked to our kids in the two days we’ve been here. One effervescent hiker even offered our four-year-old a beer.

I climb down to the dock and amble the long stretch toward them to see what is happening. The kids tell me to watch a small hole in the dock. Within seconds, a garter snake pops its head up. We’ve seen a lot of snakes in the week we’ve been at Isle Royale. The big island teems with two non-poisonous species: the northern red-bellied snake and the common garter snake. The garter snakes are unusual due to a surprising variety of colors, ranging from red-orange spots and stripes to black with deep blue stripes down the sides, like our friend beneath the dock.

Snakes are not my favorite. But like my kids, I can’t look away. We wait and watch.

In our life before kids, my husband Mark and I lived on Mazurka in downtown Chicago, even in winter. We sought adventure. We went ice climbing. We backpacked the Resurrection Pass from Hope to Seward, Alaska, in six feet of snow and no vehicle waiting at the end. We

BY FELICIA SCHNEIDERHAN

hiked the Kalalau Trail on Kauai when the sign clearly indicated Trail Closed. We planned very little, pushed ourselves hard, and reveled in the unknown. After a few years, we decided our next adventure was either having kids or biking Iceland.

Within four years, our adventuring had shrunk to our neighborhood park with a baby in a sling, a two-yearold in Mark’s arms, and our four-year-old whacking a tree with a stick.

I had two obsessions: Getting our kids outside (lest they turn into couch potato video game-playing slugs) and not letting parenthood interrupt our wilderness adventures. Thankfully, we had Mazurka and Lake Superior. We hauled our young crew to the Sleeping Giant, the Apostle Islands, and to Isle Royale. I was exhausted by the effort, miserable and wanting. On our second trip to Isle Royale, a weeklong thunderstorm trapped us at anchor with a boat full of Legos. The highlight was watching sheets of rain march toward us, backdropped by a Degas-hued absinthe green sky.

On our third Isle Royale trip, the snake trip, we are gifted with incredibly good weather and kids who can talk, use the bathroom, and hike at least four miles. Adventure, ho!

Gradually, the snake makes its way out of the hole, slithering across the dock and down, until it rests in the sandy mud. This one has a blue streak. Anton, our four-year-old, notices a frog perilously close. The snake’s tongue lashes out to taste it. Our son rescues the frog and relocates it to a stand of trees six feet away, then resumes snake watching.

The snakes we had seen before always darted away quickly when they sensed us. This one stays by the dock, its tongue flapping in the wind like a windsock. The kids take turns touching its blue-striped side. It does not flinch or move. Backpackers come and go. The kids show everyone the snake. People look at it, mildly interested, pump their daily water and leave. We stay.

Watching a snake is about as interesting as watching a kid smack a tree with a stick. Eventually, I go back to the boat to do a quick chore. I return fifteen minutes later to find I’ve missed everything.

In one brief instant, the snake shot across the beach and captured the frog by its legs. I catch a quick glimpse of the frog’s upper body sticking out of the snake’s mouth before it retreats into the dark bush to devour its meal alone.

“The frog didn’t even know it was being eaten,” Esther marvels.

My restless need to move cost me the big moment. My kids—who know how to linger and observe and not do anything—got the big pay-off on this big-time wilderness adventure. And here’s the real kicker: If the snake hadn’t eaten the frog, if there hadn’t been a big payoff, the experience would not be worth any less to them. We would still be talking about it. Remember when that snake came out? Remember we all touched it and it didn’t even move. What do you think it was doing?

Despite my earlier obsessions, my kids love video games, and we still haven’t gone to Iceland. Instead, my kids have helped me reclaim a birthright I abandoned in my ambitious adulthood: appreciation for the world as we find it, right in front of us. There does not need to be more. This is enough.

Felicia Schneiderhan lives on the northern shore of Lake Superior, where she writes in whatever closet she thinks her three tsunamis won’t find her. Author of Newlyweds Afloat: Married Bliss and Mechanical Breakdowns while Living on a Trawler, you may follow her work at feliciaschneiderhan.com