Seguin Solace

Every autumn we leave it, shuttered up dark and quiet. Every winter, we dream of its summery light, dappled by leaves and reflecting water, and its quiet warm evenings.  Every spring we reopen it, assaulted by ravenous blackflies, and retreat into its dusty interior, serenaded by spring peepers. And then, come those summer days, we journey the three hours as often as we can to soak up our little northern property on the lake: our family cottage.

Now just to say—it’s not my cottage. It’s my father’s cottage. It’s just a few kilometers south of Parry Sound, Ontario, on an inland lake, a little bit of a distance from true “Muskoka” territory.  It’s only been in the family for 13 years, so it’s not like I had my childhood summers there. But it was one of the first places my own children visited on earth, and they each have a powerful love of this lakeside cabin.

My youngest child found it too hard to believe that the warm shallow water at the little beach would freeze solid in the winter. As a two-year-old, he would argue that this lovely summer paradise was being denied him in January and February. Last year, we finally brought him and his sisters to see the cottage in the winter (my husband pulling him in on a toboggan for a half kilometer) and I think that finally convinced him that we weren’t just depriving him of one of his favourite tropical places.

At the cottage, my children have mastered many valuable life skills. All three babies learned to navigate stairs there, using the rise of the three carpeted steps from the living room to the “upper hall”. Here my eldest first tackled climbing into a bunk bed, barbequing for a Brownie badge and paddling a kayak.  This is where she and her sister tried archery, snowshoeing, stargazing, fire-building, marshmellow-toasting and weiner-roasting. And the cottage is where all of us are still learning how to tolerate or terminate the flying and swimming beasties that are blood-loving.   

Even thinking of it now, on a cold Mississauga night, it is the memory of the light that evokes the cottage best for me. I can recall standing on the deck next to the front door, spellbound by the moonlight on the winter snow that overextended the lavender shadows of the barren trees like a Lawren Harris painting.  At Thanksgiving we enjoyed the autumnal view of the surrounding forest; the trees seemed to glow with their own light source, such was the brilliant colour of their leaves.  And in the glorious summer, the sunlight bounces off the lake, through the myriad leaves, all the way up the hill to our cottage ceiling, right above where we eat dinner.  It can be mesmerizing: just ask my lake-tired children as they resist eating their suppers, lulled into peaceful contemplation by the dancing light. How dreamy, even 228 km and many months away.

2012