Cottage Daze

by James Ross

  Then there are the attempts at manufacturing the perfect ice flooding machine. While I use the old garden hose method, water dribbling out and freezing solid to my gloves, others have built fancy, portable, hand-operated rink waterers, steel pipe frames with attached rubber mats that distribute the water evenly. Some have taken this a step further and tried to attach these systems to their lawn tractors.

  While the dads have aspirations as Zamboni drivers, the youngsters would rather aspire to be their hockey heroes. This one shows up in a Crosby jersey, that one has a Stamkos Lightning sweater, and these two siblings have Doughty and Weber Team Canada wear. This finely appointed bright young fellow wears Leafs colours, while that slightly misguided dunce wears the bleu et rouge of the much-hated Habs, so I don’t allow him to play … just kidding.

  The outdoor rink cleared on the cottage lake is the ultimate in Canadiana. All you need here is a well-frozen bay or pond, and some help from Mother Nature. She needs to serve up some bitterly cold weather before sending us her snow. Often the cottage rink is a shared venture, with many neighbours helping to clear and maintain the ice, sometimes drilling holes and then flooding the rink with portable pumps. And the more the merrier when an energetic shinny match is played.

  A couple years back we took our small-town Atom-aged hockey team on an overnight getaway to a bayside cottage off the French River. It was a perfect year weather-wise for ice. The temperatures had turned biting cold for a whole week until the bay had frozen solid and smooth as glass. Any snow that fell afterwards was swept away by the wind, blown into drifts along the shore. The skating rink was perfect. We set up two nets and divided up the players and then we played … no offsides, no rules, we didn’t keep score.

  At first we had boundaries fixed in our heads, about half the size of a small arena, net to net with some space behind. As we got heated, jackets were discarded and left as markers where the sideboards might have been. Then a puck was fired hard and wide and it glided off over the ice. Suddenly the game spilled over into the endless space, players with sticks and toques skated in a jumble over the frozen lake.

  While the adults took a break, the kids skated off for miles in a straight line and shot pucks that no arena boards would confine. They skated fast and hard and jumped skiffs of blown snow, tripping and hooking each other, laughing and playing the ultimate game of keep-away. No referees, no coaches, no rules, and no parents yelling from the stands, nobody taking it too seriously. Just freedom and speed and movement and grace, outside in the cool, crisp air. The cold and the winter wind put a glow on their cheeks.

  And when they had skated their miles, had covered every corner of the frozen bay, they skated back to the warmth of the bonfire for hot chocolate and to catch their breaths. Once warmed, they were off again, darting like the summer water-bugs, this way and that over the ice. It was beautiful. It was the best of hockey, a game of shinny on the cottage rink.

  Cottage Dreaming

  Men never grow up. They think and act like children. That is my conclusion, having conducted recent research.

  The Spring Cottage Life Show at the tail end of winter is the stage for my investigations. It is the perfect time to check out all the new cottage products, the toys and gadgets that, in our minds, will add both comfort and excitement to our summer days. I’m especially excited this year because we have brought the kids along — which means more fun for a dad than simply having to trail after a spouse on an agonizing stop-and-go trek through the endless aisles of Martha Stewart–like interior exhibits. No, cottage life should be about fun in the outdoors, not inside entertaining. The kids won’t put up with the monotony of furniture, crafts, and cutesy knick-knacks, I reason. Meaning this visit will be about fun and toys and … then comes the letdown, in one simple sentence.

  “Why don’t you kids wander around on your own, and we can meet back here in an hour? Your dad and I want to check out the new cottage kitchens.”

  No! They will be climbing in and out of fancy new boats, checking out the latest in canoes, kayaks, catamarans, and windsurfers, sitting dreamily on Jet Skis and hiking themselves out on some racy sailboat like a crew-hand in the America’s Cup. They will lounge briefly in the cushioned seats of pontoon boats and play with the steering wheel of a ritzy cabin cruiser while envisioning themselves as some multi-millionaire yacht owner. They will be kicked off a good many vessels by salesmen wanting to impress more legitimate customers. The kids will try on the latest water skis and boogie boards, bounce on water trampolines, practise fly casting, and try to climb into futuristic hot tubs. I want to be with them.

  Challenging a lake that is as still as glass.

  Instead, my wife and I are hanging out staring at soapstone countertops that are “as attractive as they are durable and not only impervious to heat and stains, but virtually maintenance free.” I run over to a wine tasting exhibit to help me get through this, and then catch up to my darling wife drooling over a mammoth pine harvest table with eight sturdy plank chairs. “Wouldn’t this look good at the cabin?” she seems to be asking me, and I would probably hear her, were I not looking off with envy in the direction my four youngsters wandered.

  She stops and listens to some talking head extolling the virtues of something called ShamWow!, and then I see her take out her wallet. She hands me a small, square piece of very expensive felt and tells me she bought it for me to clean our old boat — “Fellow said it would be just like new!” I run back over to the wine exhibit, swirl a Shiraz around in my mouth, and tell the person who poured it, “Ah, full-bodied, with a distinct note of black cherry and a hint of pepper, if I’m not mistaken,” or some such thing that I memorized from the information card.

  We meander through some food exhibits and sample feta-stuffed mini pitas and little nibbles of chocolate cashew buttercrunch, so small that they are only a tease. We dip pretzels into little dishes of various sauces, while a lady explains to my wife the fine ingredients whilst glaring at me, undoubtedly recognizing the classic vacant look of the typical double-dipper. A spicy chili concoction has me running back to the vintner exhibit, only to find that I have been cut off.

  Finally, mercifully, the hour is up, and we hasten back to the rendezvous point. Perhaps seeing my pain and sensing my agony, my compassionate children beg me to come with them for a brief look at all they have discovered. I cast my eye on the elegant lines and shining chrome of a polished mahogany launch. The kids drag me onward to the fancy ski boat with all the bells and whistles, especially the enormous stereo speakers that I’m sure would be heard all around the lake. If that’s not loud enough for them, they marvel at a jet boat. With exclamations of approval, my son watches a video clip that shows the enormous, space-age craft zooming around a lake, belching fire out of its back end and sending a plume of spray a hundred metres in its wake.

  My wife stares dreamily at a sporty Hobie Cat, I’m sure taking her back to the sailing days of her youth. There is a sleek wooden rowboat, and I imagine rowing it around the island and over to shore each morning, a great way to get into shape. I show it to my wife, who imagines herself sprawled out in the bow sipping red wine while I get into shape. Something new for the cottage dream list, somewhere ahead of the flatulent jet boat, but surely well behind a harvest table.

  Epilogue: My Happy Place

  It is a hot afternoon at the lake, very warm and quite humid. The air is still and hazy, and the lake is like glass. Only occasionally does a breath of wind ripple the water and cause the pine branches overhead to nod gently. This breeze offers a brief respite from the heat, and from the little flies that tickle your legs and nip at your ankles.

  I have tucked myself back into the shade of the tree to watch the kids at play in the lake and to leaf through a good book. My daughters paddle their kayaks around our small bay like synchronized dancers, weaving in and out and around one another. Sometimes they splash one another with their paddles, all the while giggling and having fun.

  When I feel a little too ho
t, I’ll wander down to the dock and slip off the end. The water envelops me. It is cool and refreshing. I swim out twenty strokes and then return. Before reaching the dock I dive under the water and head for the kayaks, hoping to attack them from beneath and dump their contents into the lake. They see me coming, however, and dart off laughing. I climb out, towel myself off, and return to the shade.

  The dogs are curled beneath the boughs of a full spruce, hiding from the heat and the biting flies. They don’t even lift their heads as I pass, but acknowledge me with a couple of thumps of their tails. They have run all morning and now rest exhausted and content.

  I saunter up to the fridge in the cabin and grab a cold beer for myself and a cider for my wife. We sit on the dock together, watching our four children frolicking in the clear lake water, and we actually talk. We talk about things other than work. We don’t mention the kids’ long list of activities, or try to work out the complicated logistics of their daily schedules at home, of getting each child to where they need to be: piano, dance, soccer, hockey, baseball, track and field, dental and doctor appointments, tutors, or movie theatres. Rather, we talk about dreams and ideas, projects and schemes.

  We talk about the future and reminisce about the past. Some memories make us both laugh. I look at my wife’s radiant smile and her twinkling brown eyes and remember why I fell for her those many years ago.

  My son and I cook up some ribs on the barbecue for dinner, together. While I sip on a mug of Irish pale ale, he stands beside me with a tin of root beer. We have our baseball caps pulled down low and sunglasses shading our eyes. He slathers some sauce over the ribs with a basting brush and then turns them with the tongs. The dogs offer to help out, but we order them away.

  After dinner we all help clean up the kitchen, and then we pull out the old Clue game. It is fun playing now that the kids are our equals. It is nice that they are at that age when we can try our hardest, yet they still manage to outwit us.

  They also seem able to outlast us in the night, possibly because they don’t often rise until near noon. We bid them good night, give them their flashlights and books, and they disappear down to the boathouse bunkie. I blow out the kerosene lamps in the cabin and crawl under the feather comforter and snuggle up to my wife in our log bed.

  I file the day in the image bank of my mind. When I’m away and overrun at work I can recall it. When it is the dead of winter, which can be ferocious, cold, and long in these parts, I can sit back in my office chair, think about this day, and smile. When the people around me are simply being unreasonable, I can pull the image out of my mind’s file and it will cheer me.

  Fun enough to last the full year.

  My wife might find me looking vacant and grinning inanely, but rather than call me a dreamy-looking idiot she will kindly ask, “Have you gone off to your happy place?”

  Of Related Interest

  Muskoka Resorts

  Then and Now

  by Andrew Hind and Maria Da Silva

  978-1554888573

  $25.00

  Since the 1880s, people have travelled to Muskoka in search of solace and relaxation, enjoying the comfortable confines and warm welcome of resorts while at the same time revelling in the tranquil wilderness and refreshing lakes. Things haven’t really changed all that much over the past century. This storied past of carefree summers and timeless hospitality is the focus of Muskoka Resorts. Twenty classic resorts are explored, some of which are thriving today, such as Windermere House and Deerhurst, while others such as Limberlost and Bigwin Inn are long gone, though fondly remembered.

  Nature’s Year

  Changing Seasons in Central and Eastern Ontario

  by Drew Monkman

  978-1459701830

  $34.99

  This almanac of key events in nature occurring in Central and Eastern Ontario covers a region that extends from the Bruce Peninsula and Georgian Bay in the west to Ottawa and Cornwall in the east. The book is a chronicle of the passing seasons designed to inform cottagers, gardeners, photographers, suburban backyard birders, and nature enthusiasts alike as to what events in nature to expect each month of the year.

  Available at your favourite bookseller.

  Copyright © James Ross, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  Project Editor: Michael Carroll

  Copy Editor: Andrea Waters

  Design: Courtney Horner

  Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Ross, James, 1960-

  Cottage daze [electronic resource] / by James Ross.

  Electronic monograph issued in PDF and EPUB format.

  Also issued in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-0447-3

  1. Vacation homes--Humour.

  2. Country life--Humour. I. Title.

  PN6231.C65R68 2012 C818'.602 C2012-900149-X

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  www.dundurn.com