This is a beautiful piece written by Joan Ruzsa, a regular guest writer for AVRUM’S BLOG, on her love of her family cottage. What a wonderful piece to read. One gets the sense they are there with her and experiencing the beauty and brilliance of nature, her childhood and her womanhood in the woods of our lush and stunning province, Ontario. Tell us about your cottage experience. Perhaps Joan is right when she says a cottage is the closest thing to perfection, to the Garden of Eden. Tell us about yours.
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I’ve been coming to the cottage since the year I was born: before words, before memory. It almost feels like part of my DNA. As changes have inevitably occurred throughout my life, it is one of the only things that has remained constant. Maybe the water will be a little further out this year, or there might be a new recliner in the living room, but essentially, everything stays the same. It makes me feel safe.
As a child, I would spend every summer here for two full months, and would return home tanned a deep brown with my hair lightened by the sun. I would take off my shoes the minute I arrived, and not put them back on again until I left, feet hard and callused from running barefoot through hot sand.
Even though I now come up for only 1 or 2 weeks a year, it still feels more like home than my apartment. No matter what is going on in my life, or how much stress and sadness I may be carrying, the moment I get up here a sense of peace envelops me like a cocoon. It’s not just the feeling that everything will be OK, it’s the feeling that everything is OK.
I find ritual delicious, and there are definite ritualistic elements to my arrival. It starts on the highway, as I look for the Nobel sign, and then for the Esso Station with the Tim Horton’s.
My excitement mounts as we turn onto Murray Point Road.
We pass the house with the ridiculously bright pink and green siding, and the rundown trailer where the sign painter used to live until he won the lottery. We slow down as we approach the railroad tracks, look both ways,and then feel the slight bump as we cross the tracks. We reach a fork in the road and keep right as the road turns from concrete to gravel. A Monarch butterfly flits in front of the car, and a hawk glides on the wind currents above the trees.
The closer we get to the cottage, the more densely wooded the little road becomes. The sun finds gaps in the foliage, and creates dancing patterns on the path. I’m almost holding my breath as we round the corner out of the trees, and then there it is: the water, the bright blue sky with its fluffy white clouds, and the beach. I feel myself exhale, and I realize that I am smiling.
We pull into our grassy parking space and I jump out of the car and kick off my sandals, inhaling the perfume of water and sand and flowers and trees. It’s so clean and fresh. I can’t get enough of it.
The cottage squats on concrete pilings, a throwback to the days when the water was higher and could flood us if there was a good storm. These days the bay has receded, and has left in its place tall grass punctuated with bright yellow flowers, and a couple of inches of stagnant water populated with frogs and the occasional water snake. My cousins have built a make-shift bridge out of an old dock so that one can walk down to the beach without wading through the warm, soupy water.
I walk across the boards, feeling the warmth of the warped wood against the soles of my feet. I stand at the water’s edge for a moment, taking it all in, and then wade in, waves breaking gently across my ankles. I look down and see a school of minnows swimming by. I feel like a weight has been lifted from me. Later I will swim, doing laps between the rafts until my arms tire. Then I will float on my back, smiling up at the sky.
The sights, sounds and smells all conspire to put me into a constant meditative state. Me, who usually can’t sit still for a minute without a dozen worrisome thoughts ricocheting through my brain. It’s kind of miraculous.
It’s all music to me: the waves lapping against the shore; the roar of speedboats; the wind rustling the leaves; the angry chatter of the red squirrel when I get too close to her nest; the plop of a frog into the water as it leaps to safety as I prowl along the edge of the stream; the long whistle followed by the chugging rhythm of the trains; the cry of the gulls as they wheel lazily through the sky; the high annoying buzz of mosquitos circling my head; the symphony of insect sounds in the underbrush quieting to near silence as I approach and swelling again as I walk away; the call and response quacking of the ducks as the mother ushers her babies safely through the reeds looking for food.
I walk to the stream where I used to catch frogs. I would never keep them; just pick them up and then gently return them to the water: another ritual. Once 2 fishermen came by and offered me 25 cents for each frog I could give them to use for bait.
Always an animal lover, I was outraged.
I watch tadpoles push themselves through the mud with their tails,and I marvel at the water skimmers skating across the surface without leaving a single ripple in their wake. The water in the stream is ice-cold. I remember having contests with my cousin to see who could bear it the longest. We would submerge ourselves up to our necks; teeth chattering, neither of us wanting to be the first to leap up screaming and run into the warm water of the bay.
I earn the trust of the chipmunks. First I throw peanuts into the path beside the outhouse for a few days. Then I sit on the back step and let them get used to me. At first they eye me with suspicion and won’t come too close; darting in for peanuts and running to a safe distance where they maneuver their prizes into their stretchy cheeks, like chipmunk Tetris.
I toss the peanuts closer and closer to me, eventually placing them beside me on the steps. When they see I mean no harm, they grow bolder.
I sit there virtually motionless for hours at a time. I will allow myself to be eaten by mosquitos rather than risk alarming the chipmunks with sudden sound or movement. Finally I place the nuts on my knees or in the palm of my hand. They scramble up my legs, clutching for purchase with their claws, which always makes me want to giggle. They sit in the palm of my hand, looking at me with their bright eyes as they stuff their faces, and I feel like I could burst from happiness.
I take a million pictures. There is so much beauty here, and I want to document it all. I take hours-long walks. I crouch by the side of the road, bending the milkweed stalks to look for Monarch caterpillars on the underside of the leaves. I find frogs smaller than my thumbnail, so light that they can rest on leaves without bending them. Slugs, grasshoppers, fat bumblebees, beetles, weird alien insects I don’t recognize, butterflies, birds, toads, I snap them all.
I am obsessed with dragonflies: their delicate spider-web wings, their pre-historic heads, their awkward mating positions. I am in love with flowers: bright flashes of colour amidst all of the green.
After dinner, when the water is calm, I go out in the canoe. I watch the sky turn rich shades of purple, pink and orange as the sun sinks down behind the trees. The water is as smooth as glass, only rippling when my oar slices beneath the surface. After I get far enough out, I rest my paddle and sit perfectly still, listening to the cries of the loons as they echo across the water. The sky is clear and bright with stars. It is a deeply spiritual experience. I am in awe of the universe.
The day I have to leave, I usually feel heavy all day. I often cry in the car on the way back to the city, grieving the loss of all of that beauty.
This time I’m trying to keep it inside of me, to carry that sense of peace and contentment in my heart to call upon when needed. It is my sanctuary. What’s yours?
