Laskin National Park is both the setting of Frank and Janelle’s first meeting and a place Maren later visits with Lee. Its campsites and seasonal work anchor two distinct periods: the summer when Frank and Janelle fell in love, and Maren and Lee’s journey years later, shadowed by the family memories she carries with her.

Setting and Seasonal Work

When Frank was twenty-two, he took a job as a forest ranger at Laskin National Park. His duties mostly involved patrolling campsites to make sure visitors were not dumping trash or cutting their own firewood. Janelle worked at the gate-shack window, collecting entrance fees. The park’s seasonal routine also left room for swimming and hiking; Frank admitted that he and Janelle did not work as hard as they could have.

Frank and Janelle’s Summer

Frank met Janelle on his first day at the park. Their conversation turned to the inflatable woman in a red wig sitting in the passenger seat of a single man’s car, and Frank later recalled that even this shared laugh made him know he would always love her. The park is thus more than a workplace in his account: it is the place where he locates the beginning of his lasting attachment to Janelle.

After the summer ended, they stayed in a caretaker’s cabin on Plover Lake, where wealthy residents paid them to sweep porches and keep pipes from freezing. Their circle included fellow rangers Sam, Flip, and Robby, who came over on Thursday nights for drinks and poker by the woodstove. One winter, the group drove Flip’s truck onto the frozen lake for the thrill of it, despite the danger. When they returned indoors, Janelle had made grilled cheese and hot cocoa. In spring, her parents came out for the wedding. They tried to be welcoming, though they disliked having had so little chance to know Frank before he proposed; he also worried that Janelle’s mother suspected the secret he was keeping.

Maren and Lee’s Visit

Years later, Maren and Lee drove to Laskin National Park as camping season was approaching its busiest point. With so many other visitors around, sleeping in the flatbed seemed less appealing than paying the campsite fee like everyone else, and Maren spent the night alone in a small tent. In the darkness, she pictured snapshots from her parents’ summer at the park turning over one after another and wished that she or Lee owned a camera. The visit makes the family album’s remembered summer present in Maren’s own travels: the park is a real destination, but also a place through which she imagines her parents’ earlier life.

Departure and Narrative Significance

Toward the end of August, Maren and Lee’s time with Barry Cook’s pickup truck ended near the park. They had set out to fish in Door County, but only a few miles from Laskin the engine began making a coughing noise, and Lee pulled over. He spent almost an hour bent under the hood, then explained that he could not fix the problem alone. They could not call a tow truck, for reasons the account does not specify, so they removed their belongings from the truck and walked away. Maren told Lee that the breakdown was not his fault, but he remained prickly and quiet. The park therefore frames not only an inherited memory of romance and domestic life, but also a later departure marked by practical loss and strained silence.