Navigating
this instalment
of the
Cottage Diary:
(Part Six of the 2015 edition of the Cottage Diary
which began way back in 2001)
Family time!!
August 20 – 29, 2015
When Heather and I returned from California, Rachael and Michael came with us. Being Air Canada staff and family, we generally travel “stand-by” – which means that we don’t get to fly unless there are empty seats on the aircraft. As it happened, on the flight that we wanted, the only empty seats were all in the Business Class section! So we were forced to fly First Class back to Canada! Tough, eh? 1
There followed three delightful days at the cottage. Delightful for me anyway, because not only were Rachael and Michael there, but Ariel (who has her own cabin on our lake), and Troy and Marysia with their family (renting a place), were all there as well! To be with three out of my four children, plus their spouses and many offspring, makes for a bumper crop of happy, as far as I’m concerned.
(Clockwise around the table, from the bottom left:)
Alexander, Marysia, Rose, Nick, Troy, Markus, Ariel, Heather, Michael and Rachael
(Troy rented a cabin belonging to the Wooodward family, hence the sign over the window)
Where’s Our Dock!?
During this time, Heather and I had one minor adventure. We had gone by boat over to Troy and Marysia’s rented cabin, which is on a part of the lake that I don’t know very well. Expecting it to be dark when we returned, we had brought along a lantern – a large, high-tech LED lantern designed for camping. It illuminates a room or a campsite wonderfully, but what we didn’t realize was that it doesn’t throw its light very far.
It was pitch dark when we got into the boat for the return to our place. The sky was overcast – not a moon or a star to be seen. And on a lake in the middle of a deep forest, far from highways and cities, that means deep, black, impenetrable darkness.
Well, not quite. Once my eyes adjusted, I could discern the outline, against the sky, of the hills around us. As well, there were a few lights from cabins here and there. Our own cabin is in a bay, but... that distant light could be the cabin that is on the point of land just past our bay... I think! I pointed our boat towards it.
In a boat being propelled by an electric motor, we moved almost noiselessly through the dark. I turned on the lantern... which lit up the interior of the boat and Heather, but nothing more. The darkness beyond this small circle of light became, if that were possible, even more impenetrable. I turned the thing off.
Sailing a small boat in the pitch dark, even on a lake that you’ve known since childhood, can be quite unnerving. Are there underwater rocks around here? No; I’m pretty sure this part of the lake is deep. Does the cottage over there have a swimming raft far out from land? I can’t recall.
Eventually, judging from the occasional light on the shore, I figured that I had come to our bay, and began to point the boat into land. Our dock should be there...
better turn on the light. Nope, no shoreline trees are illuminated, and no dock; just darkness. The shore must still be too far away.
However, the lantern did illuminate the water around the boat, and what we saw there was seaweed. Seaweed? But our bay is deep, too deep for seaweed! This bay is shallow! I’ve gone into shore too soon!
Uh-oh. How do I get out safely in this shallow water, without either grounding the boat or wrecking the propeller? I put the motor into reverse, supposing that, having not hit anything underwater on our way in, I could safely back up, out to where it is deeper.
After a while, when I thought we had gone far enough, I put the motor into “forward,” and set a course around the point of land that separated us from the bay where our cabin really is. My brother’s dock is on that point, and a large rock juts out of the water not far from shore, so, best to keep away from that... yikes! My brother’s little sailboat looms out of the dark straight ahead of us! I push the tiller hard over, and just manage to get by! I didn’t realize that the thing is moored quite so far from shore! Hope my propellor doesn’t snag his line!
Well, we got by successfully, after which I was in familiar water, and we made it to our place without further incident.
Ummm... why hadn’t I remembered that we have a little solar-powered light at the end of our dock? When I went into the wrong bay, there was no such light, which should have told me something.... a sign of old age maybe?...
At any rate, I do own a bright spotlight, and from that day forward, in night-time trips on the water, that’s what we take with us, not the fancy big lantern!
Preparing for Another Concert
I have two daughters, and both of them are professional musicians. They sing. Rachael has done quite a lot of opera, while her sister Ariel has done early music, and more recently, 20th Century compositions for soprano voice.
You may have seen the entry in this blog where, on February 8, Rachael and I performed in a concert together. Now I’m going to get a chance to do a concert with Ariel.
She will be in Winnipeg in early November, and we are setting up a concert where she will do some works for soprano and piano accompaniment – works by an old university friend of mine actually. 2 I will do one piece, written by Francis Poulenc for clarinet and piano, and Ariel and I will do three pieces written for clarinet and soprano. All the works in the programme are “classical” style, written in the 20th Century, and all are pretty difficult.
But Ariel has a piano in her cottage! We could do some practicing together here at the lake, before she goes home!
So that is what we did – in addition to swimming, and sunning, and feasting, and playing games with the family, Ariel and I worked through two of the three pieces for clarinet and soprano. It was a lot of fun. Ariel played the piano and sang (we’ll have a professional accompanist at the concert) and I did my best with the clarinet stuff. Now and then we actually sounded quite good!
But Ariel was also the first of my family to leave the lake. She has a new position at the University of Western Ontario, and was not able to spend great gobs of time at her cabin this year. By Sunday, three days after we got back from California, Ariel was gone.
A Very Sick Little Dog
Rachael and Michael were the next to leave.
I said above that these few days were “delightful”... for me. Unfortunately, they were not quite so delightful for Rachael and Michael.
They had brought Annabelle, their extremely tiny dog, on this trip to the lake, and the little thing is getting very elderly. 3 She has severe respiratory problems, and indeed was at death’s door earlier this year.
Apparently the drought in California has one good side-effect: the air is easy on a small dog with respiratory failure.
By contrast, here in a Québec forest, and in the mould and damp of this very rainy summer, Annabelle could not survive. On their first night at our cabin, she was so distressed, she kept Rachael up all night. The next morning they took the little suffering thing to a Hawkesbury veterinary hospital, where some medication helped her to perk up.
But they were afraid to bring her back to the cabin. Instead they rented a room in a Hawkesbury motel – air conditioned and dry – and stayed there, visiting the lake without their dog during the days and evenings. And, cutting their holiday short, they went back to California on Monday afternoon.
We were sorry to see them go; and sorry that striving for the well-being of their dog is causing them so much grief – but apart from that sadness, that weekend was really wonderful, and a lot of fun.
Troy and Marysia and their family stayed for another five days – making a full two weeks of what was for them a relaxing and enjoyable vacation – then they, too, were gone, and Heather and I were left to ourselves.
Not that we sat around getting bored....
Next: Helping and Fixing
FOOTNOTES:
1 The penalty for being Air Canada family is that sometimes one doesn’t get on the chosen flight at all! Or on any flight. See my blog entry entitled “Bumped!”. But, when we do get on, and happen to be given “Business Class” seats, there is no price markup to be paid. This staff-travel privilege is extremely inexpensive, and we feel very fortunate.
Click here to get back to the narrative.
2 There is a story here. It may well be told at a later date.
Click here to get back to the narrative.
3 Annabelle is twelve. If one human year equals seven dog years, she’s now eighty-four. At the very least. She has no teeth, and as the narrative is about to tell you, she can’t breathe. She’s old.
Click here to get back to the narrative.