The shackThe most loved place, for me, in this country has in fact been many places. It has changed throughout the years, as I and my circumstances have changed. I haven’t really lost any of the best places from the past, though. I may no longer inhabit them, but they inhabit me, portions of memory, presences in the mind. One such place was my family’s summer cottage at Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba. It was known to us simply as The Lake. Before the government piers and the sturdy log staircases down to the shore were put in, we used to slither with an exhilarating sense of peril down the steep homemade branch and dirt shelf-steps, through the stands of thin tall spruce and birch trees slender and graceful as girls, passing moss-hairy fallen logs and the white promise of wild strawberry blossoms, until we reached the sand and the hard bright pebbles of the beach at the edge of the cold spring-fed lake where at nights the loons still cried eerily, before too much human shriek made them move away north.My best place at the moment is very different, although I guess it has some of the attributes of that long-ago place. It is a small cedar cabin on the Otonabee river in southern Ontario. I’ve lived three summers there, writing, birdwatching, riverwatching. I sometimes feel sorry for the people in speedboats who spend their weekends zinging up and down the river at about a million miles an hour. For all they’re able to see, the riverbanks might just as well be green concrete and the river itself flowing with molten plastic.Before sunup, I’m wakened by bird voice and, I may say, bird feet clattering and thumping on the cabin roof. Cursing only slightly, I get up temporarily, for the pre-dawn ritual of lighting a small fire in the old black woodstove (mornings are chilly here, even in summer) and looking out at the early river. The waters have a lovely spooky quality at this hour, entirely mist-covered, a secret meeting of river and sky.By the time I get up to stay, the mist has vanished and the river is a clear alebrown, shining with sun. I drink my coffee and sit looking out to the opposite shore, where the giant maples are splendidly green now and will be trees of flame in the fall of the year. Oak and ash stand among the maples, and the grey skeletons of the dead elms, gauntly beautiful even in death. At the very edge of the river, the willows are everywhere, water-related trees, magic trees, pale green in early summer, silvergreen in late summer, greengold in autumn.I begin work, and every time I lift my eyes from the page and glance outside, it is to see some marvel or other. The joyous dance-like flight of the swallows. The orange-black flash of the orioles who nest across the river. The amazing takeoff of a red-winged blackbird, revealing like a swiftly unfolded fan the hidden scarlet in those dark wings. The flittering of the goldfinches, who always travel in domestic pairs, he gorgeous in black-patterned yellow feathers she (alas) drabber in greenish grey-yellow.A pair of great blue herons have their huge unwieldy nest about half a mile upriver, and although they are very shy, occasionally through the open door I hear a sudden approaching rush of air (yes, you can hear it) and look up quickly to see the magnificent unhurried sweep of those powerful wings. The only other birds which can move me so much are the Canada geese in their autumn migration flight, their far-off wilderness voices the harbinger of winter.Many boats ply these waterways, and all of them are given mental gradings of merit or lack of it, by me. Standing how in the estimation of all of us along this stretch of the river are some of the big yachts, whose ego-tripping skippers don’t have the courtesy to slow down in cottage areas and whose violent wakes scour out our shorelines. Ranking highest in my good books are the silent unpolluting canoes and rowboats, and next them, the small outboard motorboats put-puttuing along and carrying patient fishermen, and the homemade houseboats, unspeedy and somehow cozy-looking, decorated lovingly with painted birds or gaudy abstract splodges.In the quiet of afternoon, if no boats are around, I look out and see the half-moon leap of a fish, carp or muskie, so instantaneous that one has the impression of having seen not a fish but an are of light. The day moves on, and about four o’clock Linda and Susan from the nearby farm arrive. I call them the Girls of the Pony Express. Accompanied by dogs and laughter, they ride their horses into my yard, kindly bringing my mail from the rural route postbox up the road. For several summers it was Old Jack who used to drive his battered Volkswagen up to fetch the mail. He was one of the best neighbors and most remarkable men I’ve ever known. As a boy of eighteen, he had homesteaded a hundred miles north of Regina. Later, he’d been a skilled toolmaker with Ford. He’d traveled to south America and done many amazing things. He was a man whose life had taught him a lot of wisdom. After his much-loved wife died, he moved out here to the river, spending as short a winter as possible in Peterborough, and getting back into his cottage the first of anyone in the spring, when the river was still in flood and he could only get in and out, hazardously, by boat. I used to go out in his boat with him, late afternoons, and we would dawdle along the river, looking at the forest stretches and the open rolling farmlands and vast old barns, and at the smaller things closeby, the heavy luxuriance of ferns at the water’s rim, the dozens of snapping turtles with unblinking eyes,all sizes and generations of the turtle tribe, sunning themselves on the fallen logs in the river. One summer, Old Jack’s eighty-fourth, he spent some time planting maple saplings on his property. A year later, when I saw him dying, it seemed to me he’d meant those trees as a kind of legacy, a declaration of faith. Those of us along the river, here, won’t forget him, nor what he stood for.After work, I go out walking and weed-inspecting. Weed and wildflowers impress me as much as any cultivated plant. I’ve heard that in a year when the milkweed is plentiful, the Monarch butterflies will also be plentiful. This year the light pinkish milkweed flowers stand thick and tall, and sure enough, here are the dozens of Monarch butterflies, fluttering like dusky orange-gold angels over the place. I can’t identify as many plants as I’d like, but I’m learning. Chickweed, the ragged-leafed lambs’ quarters, the purple-and-white wild phlox with its expensive-smelling free perfume, the pink and mauve wild asters, the two-toned yellow of the tiny butter-and-eggs flowers, the burnt orange of devil’s paintbrush, the staunch nobility of the huge purple thistles, and,almost best of all, that long stalk covered with clusters of miniature creamy blossoms which I finally tracked down in my wild-flower book—this incomparable plant bears the armorial name of the Great Mullein of the figwort Family. It may not be the absolute prettiest of our wildflowers, but it certainly has the most stunning pedigree.It is night now, and there are no lights except those of our few cottages. At sunset, an hour or so ago, I watched the sun’s last flickers touching the rippling river, making it look as though some underwater world had lighted all its candles down there. Now it is dark. Dinner over, I turn out the electric lights in the cabin so I can see the stars. The black skydome (or perhaps skydom, like kingdom) is alive and alight.Tomorrow the weekend will begin, and friends will arrive. we’ll talk all day and probably half the night, and that will be good. But for now, I’m content to be alone, because loneliness is something that doesn’t exist here.
|
