Cottage Daze Page 2

  “He’ll get back in.”

  “I’ll take him to the other side of the island.”

  “He has discovered easy food. He will find his way back.”

  “Do I have to drown him?”

  Hey, I was a sensitive kid. I paddled the one-mile stretch of water to the mainland in my canoe, a white garbage bucket in the bow. I set the mouse free. Perhaps a hawk or garter snake found him, but I felt quite pleased with myself. My dad teased me, not being able to face the facts of nature. “Outside, they are left alone,” he would say. “But once our space has been invaded, they have to go.”

  It is with great trepidation that we head to the cabin each spring, to open the cottage for another season. What mouse treats will be left behind? What wanton acts of vandalism or destruction? What careless mistakes did we make when closing the cottage last fall?

  One year a box of spaghetti had been left behind, and the mice had broken each individual noodle into tidy one-inch pieces. These they stored in various caches throughout the cabin, including inside the oven mitts that hung on the side of the stove. Another year it was a bar of soap, left by the sink, that was chewed and shaved into a thousand slivers, leaving us with the freshest smelling rodents on the lake.

  This year, Grandma is annoyed that someone has stolen the laces out of her old, comfortable camp shoes — though nobody will admit to needing a piece of string. We find the thieves when we separate the box spring and mattress in the back bedroom. The laces are there, still in one piece, wound gently around the lip of a downy mouse nest, like garland around a Christmas wreath. Mouse mom and mouse babies stare up in innocence. The children find them cute — our youngest asks to keep one, wanting to name him Stuart Little. The war is at a truce.

  With the grandchildren and Grandma keeping a stern watch, and I, for my part, grinning a silly smile that hinges on a thirty-some-year-old cottage memory, off goes Grandpa in the boat to shore, with a family of mice gently stowed with their nest in a bucket at the bow.

  Hello, World!

  My dad would wander out on the front porch of the cottage and shout out, “Hello, world!” at the top of his lungs. The bellow would break the silence of a summer’s evening and echo across the still lake waters. I am not sure if anyone across on shore ever heard him, but they certainly didn’t bother to holler back with, “Hello, Mr. Ross.” Maybe they just heard it and muttered amongst themselves, “There’s that lunatic again.”

  We would have just finished up our dinner when he’d get up and step outside to let go with his familiar salutation. Or we might be playing a family board game on the big pine harvest table in the evening when he would head out to the loo, pausing on the porch to shout.

  Sometimes we kids would have settled in for the night in the boathouse bunkie. We would be telling ghost stories or shining our flashlights around on the ceiling like spotlights. We would be giggling and talking and, sometimes, we would be getting yelled at to “be quiet and get to sleep and quit wasting the batteries in the flashlights!” — much the same things we chastise our kids for now. When we had settled down and were drifting off to a sweet sleep, lulled by the sounds of waves lapping on shore, the wind in the trees, or the distant call of a loon, comforted even by the sounds of adult voices and laughter coming from the cottage — suddenly the front door of the cabin would swing open and we would hear the familiar refrain, “Hello, world!”

  When we were young we would giggle at his antics. What a silly thing for a dad to be doing. In our teenage years we would roll our eyes and think, “How geeky!” As we grew older and visited the cottage with our friends, we would wince every time he stepped outside, and then let out a sigh of relief if nothing happened. Then, there it was, the shout. He seemed curiously incapable of being embarrassed, which was all right because I felt enough for both of us. Red-faced, I would cast an eye at my comrades for their reactions.

  In retrospect, though I might have thought his antics embarrassed me in front of my good friends, I don’t think his inane shouting from the cottage’s front porch elicited any such response from them. Perhaps their own fathers had similar unusual traits. Perhaps they had become hardened to such behaviour over time.

  When I started visiting the cottage with my own family, Grandpa would still wander out to the front porch and shout his greeting. The kids would giggle; what a funny thing for a grandpa to be doing. I was all right with it by then, too. In fact, his shouted greeting had become a part of the place, a part of what I felt at home and comfortable with and what made the cottage such a familiar and fun place to visit.

  Feel as if you can fly.

  We bought the cottage from my folks, and a funny thing happened. I would step outside in the evening, and I’d have this overpowering desire to shout to the world. At first I’d send out the familiar phrase in a hoarse whisper. Sometimes I’d yell it a little louder, much to my children’s chagrin and my wife’s displeasure. She’d give me that look: “See, you’re turning into your dad, you’re picking up all his silly habits. Do you want me to start acting like my mom?” Well, no, but that’s another whole column.

  We opened up the cottage on a beautiful weekend in April this year. We had made our way through the opening checklist, completed our chores, and then sat down for a nice steak dinner. We cleaned up afterwards, together, and then I stepped out on the porch, stretched, and couldn’t resist the urge … “Hello, world!” I shouted.

  My wife stepped out behind me, but rather than giving me heck, she gave me a little hug and said, “Yes, it’s great to be back here.”

  Looking back, I realize that my dad’s greeting, offered out to the lake, was simply a statement to anyone who was listening and to nobody in particular. My dad was saying, “I’m happy to be here!” Or perhaps, “I love this place!” After all, he never did it anywhere else. It was something only for the cottage. “Hello, world!”

  The Rescue

  First of all, before I begin this little story, I want to let it be known that I do not suffer from arachnophobia. I might prefer a snake slithering across my path, a leech stuck to my midsection, or even tripping over a hornets’ nest to having a big, hairy, creepy-crawling spider spinning me into a death cocoon, but, in general, spiders are all right.

  The Hobbses are good friends of ours. Even though they live over a mile away, they are our cottage neighbours. They have the small island called Blueberry to the northeast. If we ever need a hand, or advice, Harvey Hobbs is always willing.

  This April the lake ice took away the dock on Blueberry Island, making it extremely difficult for the Hobbses to land on their steep rock shoreline. The dock had simply disappeared, another victim of the destructive power of spring breakup. Here, then, was an opportunity for us to pay back the Hobbses for their unerring helpfulness. We set out on a morning mission in our boat to find the missing dock and return it to its rightful place. After some searching, we spied an intact, sixteen-foot section of the dock on an uninhabited stretch of the north shore.

  The dock was wedged high on the boulder-strewn beach. My wife and I struggled to get it afloat, using twelve-foot rails as pry bars. My father, skippering the boat, attached a line to the stringers and pulled. We gradually worked the heavy thing loose and got it floating. My wife jumped into the bow of the runabout to help guide us through the many shoals. I stayed on the dock-turned-raft.

  Off we went, towing the dock across the calm lake with me balancing on the deck boards. If I moved towards the bow, the front of the dock dipped below the water. If I moved to the port or starboard, I found I could help manoeuvre the clumsy barge to the left or right. Only the back middle third of the dock stayed high and dry.

  Imagine my consternation when, as I stood regally on the raft with the wind blowing through my hair, I looked down and saw an enormous spider standing beside me. He looked like my pet dog sitting primly there at my feet. If I was captain of this vessel, he was my first mate. He was huge and ugly. I wouldn’t say he was as big as my hand (that would be an e
xaggeration) but he wasn’t much smaller. I was naturally startled, which is why I let out a little screech, a piercing whelp that thankfully went unheard over the buzz of the boat motor. I quickly regained my composure and almost decided to squish him, sending his body to a watery grave.

  I admired his bravery, however. I admired his survival instincts. He had joined me on this little adventure, so who was I to repay his trust by stamping down on him with my water shoes. Besides, I felt like Pi on a raft alone with his Bengal tiger. Oh, you may laugh, me comparing this little insect to a ferocious killer cat, but spiders can be extremely dangerous, too.

  So the journey continued for this spider and me, two castaways separated from certain death by a few dry boards. I kept a watchful eye on him — and sensed that he did the same with me. When I looked nervously down, he craned his little head and peered skyward. I smiled, and he returned the grin. The trip seemed to last for most of the day, but in reality took about an hour. Finally we circled around Blueberry Island and motored into the little nook to return the dock to its old resting spot.

  The boat crew released the tow rope and threw me a paddle so I could steer our dock into position. As I leaned over to paddle, the dock dipped under the lake water. The spider headed for high ground, which just happened to be up my leg. I swatted him.

  Now, before you get upset at my reaction, thinking that I had killed my faithful travelling companion, when I say “swatted him” I simply mean I brushed him off my leg. True, my action did send him catapulting into the lake, causing him to thrash about in a dance of survival, but it was a predicament that was easily rectified with a gently placed paddle blade. The arachnid climbed aboard, and I placed him gently on shore. Without a word of thanks, he scurried off.

  I hope that Harvey is happy to have his dock back, and that he does not mind that I have added to the spider population of his island. I’m sure he will happily bound off his dock, up onto the island, and walk face first into a sticky spiderweb. Perhaps it was a pregnant female.

  Flying Piranha

  My wife is from Vancouver. There are no blackflies in Vancouver — none in the whole of British Columbia, really. There are plenty of mosquitoes. There are little gnats we call no-see-ums that get under the brim of your hat and bite at your forehead. There are wasps and hornets and bees, and ticks that drop off the spring willow and burrow into your neck. Big horseflies dart around your head, avoiding your windmilling arms, driving you slowly crazy.

  There are biting red ants that crawl up your socks and nip at your ankles when you unwittingly sit on a rotten log or lie out in the grass on a warm summer’s day using their anthill as a pillow. There are many minor nuisances in our western province, but none that can measure up to the ferocity of the blackfly. Blackflies prefer the rocks, lakes, bush, and swift-flowing streams of Muskoka. They are a little bit like cottagers that way.

  While I have fond memories of these miniature flying piranha from my youth, when we move back to cottage country in the summer of 2005, my wife has yet to be introduced.

  “There is something wrong with Jenna,” cries my wife. “She’s bleeding from the back of her head.” She holds our six-year-old daughter close to comfort her, but her panic and the mention of blood serves only to agitate the youngster, sending her into tears.

  I wander over to have a look. Little trickles of blood stream down from behind each ear.

  “Did you hit your head?” my wife is asking.

  “Blackflies,” I pronounce. Of course, I am always quite pleased to know something about something. Especially to know some little tidbit that my wife does not. It happens so rarely.

  “Blackflies did that?” she asks incredulously — and then she takes a swat at a deer fly that has landed on our daughter’s back. “Well, there is one blackfly that won’t be bothering you again,” she states haughtily, as the crumpled fly falls dead to the grass.

  “No, no,” say I — and I point to a tiny little flying speck that buzzes Jenna’s hair.

  My wife squints at the minuscule gnat and then stares at me as if I am quite mad. The little black insects cloud around my head as well, landing on the hairline at the back of my neck. I stupidly let one take a huge chunk out of my hide, just to prove my point. She watches the blood flow, and then starts to laugh. Cheered by the sudden gaiety, my young daughter also giggles at my misfortune, and the two ladies trot happily into the cottage to clean up the bloody smears, leaving me to wave my hands frantically at a swarming, invisible enemy.

  While blackflies love me, they do not seem to care for my wife. When we work around the cabin, she does so in shorts and T-shirt, while I cover up, flail my arms about inanely, and constantly twitch and shake like a dog. Why blackflies prefer some people to others, I do not know. Perhaps it is because, though she is of the fair sex, I have the fairer skin. I have told her that her blood must be sour — to which she retorts that most flying insects do seem to swarm over horse droppings in the field.

  The Game of Tape and Ladders

  Okay, here’s the deal: I’m swinging on the cabin’s main log beam, looking a lot like Cheetah, the chimpanzee. Perhaps I am dating myself here. Cheetah was Tarzan’s pet monkey in those 1930s black and white Tarzan movies, the chimp who was so talented at swinging on branches and from tree to tree. Maybe my audience for this column is a little younger; I should have compared myself to Rafiki, the famous blue-faced baboon of Lion King fame — or perhaps George of the Jungle.

  Anyway, I’m wasting time here, and time is something I don’t feel I have a lot of in my current predicament — so back to my story …

  I’m swinging on the big log purloin that runs the length of our cottage. I was cleaning the large upper front window when the ladder underneath me essentially collapsed.

  Swinging around, holding on for dear life, and looking down at the floor far beneath, I sense that my wife is standing there laughing at me. She seems to be asking, “What do you think you are doing?” Then, perhaps showing a tiny bit of compassion, she seems to be asking if I’m all right. It’s like it is not unusual for her to hear a crash, come into the cabin, and see her husband swinging on the ceiling like a primate.

  It seems like hours, but is more likely just a few seconds that I hang there speechless — speechless until I realize she is trying to coax me down with a banana. “Please hurry out to the shed and grab the old wooden ladder,” I plead.

  “That old thing?” she asks. “That’s dangerous.”

  “Dear, my arm is getting tired here.”

  She rescues me with the aged, warped wooden ladder, the one with the split rail and missing rungs, the ladder that she has been asking me to throw out or burn for years. Instead, I kept it as a backup (and I’m sure glad I did) for the more modern aluminum stepladder, the one that was held together with duct tape, the one that my father-in-law had rescued from the dump and bequeathed to me at the time of my marriage. Perhaps he hoped we would elope. Or perhaps he hoped the ladder would collapse into a mangle of metal with me on it, as it did just now.

  Safe on the ground, and feeling lucky, I expect a few tears and a hug of gratitude from my darling spouse, who came so close to losing me. Instead, I find myself being chastised. “We’re getting a new ladder. I’ve been telling you to throw those ladders out for years!” This anger comes from being truly afraid, I try telling myself, until, “It could have been me on that ladder, did you ever think of that?”

  It is funny. Our cottage often becomes the retirement home for all of our old tools and furniture, stuff that has long worn out its welcome at home. When my wife says, “We have to get rid of that before someone gets hurt,” I slip it into my pickup and sneak it up to the cottage. I might find the available funds to buy some nice steaks and a good bottle of wine for the cottage barbecue dinner, I might even splurge on that bottle of rare single malt to enjoy on the dock at day’s end, but a few bucks for a new ladder? I’ve got one that works — I even have a backup.

  As she continues chastising, my wi
fe notices that my concentration is waning. Worse than that, she always seems to know what I’m thinking. My gaze has shifted to the scrap of metal that was once a sturdy ladder — thirty-some years earlier, perhaps. I’m thinking, “With a few wooden splints and a lot of duct tape, we just might get a few more years out of” … whap. I survived the fall, only to be concussed by a ripe banana.

  Forever Young

  It is astonishing the sharp, distinct, and compelling memories that summer cottages evoke.

  I had been living out west for more than twenty years when my parents decided it was time to sell our family island cottage. I knew, then, it was time to come home. We were a family of wanderers, never living in one town too long, always off in search of a new adventure. As we moved from place to place, the cottage remained a constant and was where I felt most rooted. I didn’t want to lose it. So I bought the property, loaded up my life, and drove across the country.

  Now, when I see my own children climbing up swim rock in their bathing suits, I experience a strong sense of déjà vu. I watch them and remember my young cottage days, when our pleasant summer routine had us spending our days swimming, playing board games, loafing, running in the trees, water-skiing, building bonfires, and, as we got older, flirting with young ladies.

  When the low black rain clouds rolled in across the lake and the thunder and lightning whipped the water into a frenzy, we lit the oil lamps and spent our afternoons and evenings in the cabin or out on the covered porch, reading, conversing, or playing games. There was a certain simplicity to our life there: we pulled out old board games, a deck of cards, or warped jigsaw puzzles.

  The cottage is a place of youth and energy.

  We ran through the island’s dark spruce and balsam forest, feeling that we had discovered a place of mystery and wonder. In this quiet wood we sensed the primeval and thought that no one had stood here before. We found our own hideouts and secret bases, hollows under thick boughs, mini caves hidden under granite ledges.