Growing Up on Cotton Lake, Minnesota--Virginia Weston

"I'm Virginia Weston. I've lived here almost 70 years, born here. When I was a kid in junior high and senior high, my parents had a, or grandparents, had a cottage on Cotton Lake, and we would go there every weekend all summer long to go fishing and swimming and just have fun. It was a really exciting time  . . . as most kids are excited about their childhood. And we would fish out in the middle of the lake, and there's a big island out there that's got a little lake on it, with a little island on that. We couldn't go there at that time because it was owned privately. It's now part of the nature conservancy, and I don't know if they still do tours out there or not, but it's an awesome lake. Living here for as long as I have, I guess in a lot of ways, the lakes have become rather mundane. They just don't seem to matter to me as much anymore as they did when I was a kid." 

This story was collected as part of a collaborative effort to record the state of American lakes, rivers, and waterways as well an attempt to uncover what water means to Americans. Listen to other stories recorded by the Minnesota Humanities Center for their We Are Water MN initiative, an outgrowth of our national traveling exhibition "Water/Ways."  

Asset ID #3912