Fairy. Peninsula. Mary.

The lakes on the Huntsville chain, and Vernon is the biggest of them. The wide water at the head of it all. The Big East pours in from Algonquin country. Forty miles of connected waterway start here.

Before the surveyors named it, this was a canoe corridor, a link between the inland lakes and everything beyond. It's been carrying people through ever since. Summer camps on the shoreline. A fishing derby on the February ice. A boat ride to the town docks for dinner, and enough open water on the way back that the sky feels bigger than it should.