Free Cottage Daze by James Ross Page A

tell the family about my find. I decided it best, for why hide nature’s truths? I have seen a lot of things, but this was a lesson for me as well. I never thought it possible for this snake to swallow a toad the size of a softball.
    And the lesson was not over. Not long after, as we were enjoying lunch on the dock, we saw our friendly red-tailed hawk wing past with what looked like a length of rope dangling from its talons.
    The snake, made lazy and careless in victory, had become the victim. Another of nature’s battles had been won and lost.
    Island Kingdom
    It is a beautiful sunny day. Wispy clouds drift lazily across the blue. My wife snoozes in the lounger with an open book on her lap. The children play on the swim raft moored in the bay, pushing each other off in some form of “king of the castle.” The giggling and laughter is a beautiful sound. King of the raft they may be, but I am the monarch of this island, methinks, as I stand surveying my kingdom.
    Often when we think of an earthly paradise, it is an island that is imagined. True, it is mostly a tropical destination, with white sand beaches, blue ocean, and swaying palms, but also it seems to be the self-containment that the island promises that is an important part of the fantasy.
    My cottage is on an island. It is far from tropical; in fact, it can be quite chilly some days, even in summer. There is no sandy beach, no salty ocean air or turquoise water, no palms, sea birds, or tropical fish. The island is a balsam-scented, three-acre mound of rock, cedar, and pine situated in the middle of a lake in the northern woods. It is the island from a Tom Thomson painting. The conifers are bent in the wind and gnarled with age.
    On the island, in a setting of white birch and mountain ash, is a rambling log cabin with a loft and ladder, polished wood furniture, a wood-burning fireplace, covered porch, and cedar privy. Muskoka chairs are on the dock at the end of a short, well-worn path. There is no electricity, telephone, or running water. A propane oven or little wood stove is where we do our cooking, and oil lamps help light the cabin at night. It is a relaxing place, and a fun and safe place for the family. The children and our dogs can run around and we do not worry. The island provides a combination of freedom and security.
    King of the castle — giggling and laughter are beautiful sounds.
    The island might lack the tropical flavour or even the fearsome cliffs or craggy mountains that fix some islands in one’s memory. Here, at the cottage, the beauty is more modest than spectacular. It is beautiful, though, surrounded by inviting water and a sweeping panorama of inlets, islands, and peninsulas.
    True, cottaging on a remote island can provide certain obstacles. One cannot so readily hop in the car and head to town for milk and bread. It is a little bit more of a logistical dilemma when everything has to be brought by boat — the provisions for a week’s stay, the hundred-pound propane cylinders needed for cooking and refrigeration, or the lumber for a cottage project. The marvellous sense of isolation is peculiar to islands, and it is this isolation that both limits distractions and demands self-sufficiency.
    I have always thought of myself as an island person. My wife and family would say that I am frugal. I am self-sufficient, comfortable with solitude, an avid reader, and greedy for small pleasures. Since this is an island that has been in the family since my childhood, the cottage also encourages a powerful nostalgia in me.
    It was on the island that I learned to fish and canoe, water-ski, chop wood — it was here that I grew to manhood. I cut a deep, jagged gash in my left pointer finger when the crosscut saw I was using slipped out of the log. I hid by the water on a rock ledge surrounded by cedars, not wanting to admit my careless mistake — holding a blood-soaked cloth over a wound that needed stitches. Unembarrassed