There’s something about certain cottages that make me lose a little interest in being there.
Maybe interest isn’t quite the right word. But it certainly detracts from the whole experience. Which is strange, because some of my best times up north were had in Algonquin Park a previous lifetime ago, where the accomodations were almost too comfortable, too perfect, and indeed it was when it all came crashing down. In particular, I’m reminded of trolling for lake trout in a blizzard, sub-zero temperatures, frozen to the bone, but coming back to the warm confines of the sleeping cottage and its old wood stove. Nights spent pounding Moosehead and smoking Backwoods in what might as well have been the middle of the wilderness, until a 53-footer would come barrelling down Highway 60 at two in the morning, shaking the earth. Plowing off an ice rink on a frozen lake covered with a foot and a half of snow for no reason other than a desire to play hockey. Those are times that would not be forgotten, but friendships that would be.
That place had a certain mystique, an aura about it that I can’t pin down, that still exists after years of absence. But that’s an example of something that detracts from a cottage’s appeal.
Nipissing need not be mentioned, of course. Every time I walk through the door of #9, the spirit of weekends and years past still linger. And I’m not talking about that bottle of “XXX” that has remained duly ignored in the bottom-left cabinet near the sink for the past decade. The memories come rushing in.
I swear that there exists two distinct, separate persons for every one who has been there. Whenever we all meet on that same spit of land on that same river, it’s like we all are meeting for the first time since we last saw each other there. The Schoolteacher, the Scottish Schoolteacher, the Guide, Conda, Dino, Papa, Glennard, Ally, Diga and Torch are all reunited each of those magical weekends, sometimes with new faces and sometimes not, and the memories come, too, replaying while I sleep like an old black-and-white motion picture.
The firepit contains 10-year-old beer can shards and bottle caps, burned ashen over the years. Each one has a story: a song that was sung as it was cast into the pit, and at another time, an asshole out of his mind on crack crying for his wife while dumping gasoline on the fire kicks another bottle in. The customary arrival and departure handshakes open and close each weekend. The first night is usually endless. The last night is dominated by an overwhelming and pervasive sense of remorse. When we all say goodbye, it’s as if we won’t be seeing each other for another six months, even though most of us will see each other the next day.
But as for Restoule, Hartley Bay, Maskinonge… some cottages don’t have that aura. There are no unique memories, no everlasting bonds (nor, for that matter, ones that are devastatingly broken; I haven’t been back to Algonquin Park in years, have no intention of ever going back, but it still holds a significant place in my mind), no common sense of character. Those that go to a cottage, in my mind, should feel a strong urge to survive together, to make it through the weekend, to do stupid shit either unpurposefully and unintentionally, or for the sake of adventure, and get away with it. I’m not talking about some fake X-Games nonsense, and drinking to the excess barely qualifies. I’m talking about almost losing your life with two others to a freak thunderstorm in an aluminum tin can on a bush lake in the middle of nowhere, staying on an island overnight with a good friend and cooking fresh walleye over a campfire before talking about life until the sun rises, getting the pickup truck firmly wedged in a snowbank somewhere on a frozen lake on the way to the ice fishing grounds, nearly losing the boat on three separate occasions in huge swells, watching a good friend drink a two-four to himself and then sleep face to the ice-cold concrete of the barn floor, breaking into a stranger’s cottage to take refuge from a windswept lake for the night and not getting a wink of sleep, crashing by an open fire in sleeping bags, or staying up all night then deciding it’s a good idea to line up half a dozen guys on docks at the crack of dawn to fish on Opening Day while all six fishing lines end up downstream in a tangled, gnarly mess.
Some cottages don’t have that. It cannot be forced; it must happen naturally. Some cottage trips happen far too late, and while there should never be a cottage trip that should not happen, sometimes one can’t help but feel that staying at home would have been the proper course of action.
Each cottage is different. Some you never want to leave, and if you see others again it will be too soon. All of them, however, teach you something. They teach you life lessons, how to be and how not to be. Some won’t exist the next time you visit, and even though the physical building is gone, you could stand where it once was, and that same old motion picture plays back in your mind. It’s like you never left, even if that cottage gave up its ghosts a long time ago.
