Another Summer

The Lake

In the summer (here anyway) people go to ‘the cottage’. We used to go to ‘the lake’ when I was a kid which was nothing like ‘the cottage’. For one thing, there was no ‘cottage’. The ‘lake’ was somewhere near Edmonton, far enough away that it seemed like traveling but close enough to manage half a dozen kids in the back of the Chevy, none with a seatbelt. The lake was a slightly silty, warmish, quagmire, where we went to splash about, frolic, maybe learn to swim, get a rash of some kind, and laugh at our dad’s man breasts. It was a way, I’m pretty sure, for my parents to escape without really escaping. Mom still had to cook, and Dad had to put up some kind of tent or tent-trailer and comment on Mom’s outdoor cooking which he was better at in his opinion (and ours); both of them drifting off to sleep to forget about us in the middle of the afternoon because it’s hard for the kids to drown in two feet of dirty water (as much as we tried). The lake was truly horrible and wonderful at the same time. The mosquitos were in abundance - something to kill instead of time.

The cottage is a vastly different experience. There’s money at the cottage. As you boat along the shore of some pristine lake, dodging jet skis and drunks in pontoons, you can’t help but wonder just how much money. These are not cottages some of them. These are outrageous expressions of wealth, graced by pine trees. People aren’t escaping to here. They’re relocating their affluence. The towns are filled with art nobody would buy if it wasn’t summer, trinkets that shouldn’t exist and handmade soap that is neither handmade nor soap. The pricey restaurants are full by 11 am. The mosquitos are in abundance and so are the wasps, insect and otherwise.

I don’t mean to put people down, especially rich people who already have so many other disadvantages, but money does seem to take away some of the joy of a vacation. I’m talking about the kind of joy you get from a burnt hotdog and a third-degree sunburn. Nobody had a boat at the lake we went to, or water skis. Nobody got pulled around in a giant inflatable raft. Yes, all the adults were drunk by 4 but they weren’t out on the water listening to loud yacht rock and waving to each other half-heartedly. They were quietly passed out in a broken lawn chair while we were swinging from tires. The joy of a summer vacation, it seems to me, is not the joy of relocation, but the happiness that comes from dropping it all, leaving it at home whatever it is. To speed along a water passage in a powerboat is pretty much the same as speeding along the 401 in a Lexus, except for the otters diving for cover and the loons wailing for everyone to leave. There is no departure when you bring it all with you.

But here and there you see a cabin tucked away in the trees that isn’t an elegant four-star boathouse and behind that a seven-bedroom mansion that could be a hotel. There must’ve been a time, it appears, when people came to be away. There must’ve been a time for taking time, perhaps reading a short but excellent novel – like the one I just published.

Yes, like this one

We have friends with cottages on lakes, yes, but those are mostly unpretentious hideaways where we can enjoy each other’s company over summer drinks and barbeques without the luxury of five bathrooms, in other words ‘roughing it’ with only one. It’s here that I understand most the lure of the cottage. It’s the same as the lake. It isn’t the place; it’s the people at it. And not just sharing a toilet, although that is one of the special perks. It’s somewhere to gather that isn’t home. Somewhere nearby that’s far away. Here the mind relaxes, and the body with it. Whatever magnifies tension can quickly diminish around a fire. There are outdoor sounds at night; not just the GFL truck backing up into a dumpster, but crickets and other strange creatures that exist in the hidden world of the outdoors; the world we don’t live in anymore. We come to hear them, to reach backwards through time when life and nature lived side by side without argument. We sleep differently here. We rise and see the sunlight first of all.

And then, of course, we grow tired of it and need to hurry back. But at least we were here, at least we left whatever it was to be where it wasn’t. And even brought some handmade soap back with us.