The Lake of Changing Colors
Cyrus DeCoster

Copyright 2000
International Standard Book Number: 1-929612-11-7
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-104854

Cyrus DeCoster first saw Deer Lake in 1924 while on a motor trip as a child of ten. Two years later he spent six weeks in a rented cabin at Sherwood Forest Camp, which was then owned by family friends. In 1932, when his father purchased the log cabin next door to Sherwood, his long relationship with Deep Lake began. Within several years, however, summers "up north" were interrupted first by graduate studies (in France and Chicago) and then by service in the Navy during World War II. He married in 1948; and although his teaching career took him from Carleton College to the University of Kansas and finally to Northwestern University, the Deer Lake cabin was always summer headquarters for him and his family. With few exceptions their return to the north woods has been an annual event. At the age of eighty Cy set aside his scholarly research in Spanish literature and began this personal history of his beloved lake. He died on January 29, 1999, shortly after completing the first draft.