Cottage Daze (10 page)

The Cottage Duel

Okay, it's not really the same as pistols at fifty paces, a good old medieval joust, or a bare-knuckled boxing match in the school playground, but, at the cottage, it is a fair means of settling disputes. Insults have been cast, a challenge is made and accepted, and the duel begins. The combat sometimes lasts for only a few brief seconds. Other battles can take fifteen minutes or more. The winner stays dry. The loser suffers an embarrassing dunking in the lake.

We call it gunnel bobbing, a canoe-based balancing act akin to lumberjack log rolling. The two combatants paddle out into the bay, one climbs up on the stern, the other on the bow, both face each other with feet firmly planted on the canoe gunnels. The idea is to shake and bob and wobble the canoe around to throw your opponent off balance. When you see you're getting the upper hand, you go for the kill — a couple of hard shakes has them tumbling into the surf.

For us, gunnel bobbing had become a somewhat forgotten sport. Canoes were used for more practical purposes, like paddling around on a quiet evening or heading out on a multi-day trip. We were going through an old box of snapshots, which we had discovered stored away at the back of a cupboard at the cottage, when we came across some goofy photos of us as kids, gunnel bobbing out in the little bay on my brother's cedar strip canoe. After commenting on the horrendous styles of our circa 1979 bathing trunks and bikinis, our kids were excited to have discovered another way to have fun at the cabin. A tournament was arranged: it would be sister against sister, sister against brother, and cousin against cousin. The “All World Cottage Gunnel Bobbing Championship” was at stake.

My past experience made me resident expert, coach, trainer, and judge. When coaching new combatants, I always stress the point that it is unwise to try to hang on when a dunking is inevitable. Refusing to face certain defeat usually just means that you tumble into the canoe instead of into the refreshing water. That can hurt — so, when you are losing your balance, the best strategy is to jump clear into the lake.

It is a lesson that stubborn boys, in particular, are slow to learn. This is especially so when they are paired with their obnoxious sisters: they must win at all costs. So it is with my son's first competition. He does what I warned against and topples into the canoe upon losing his balance — one leg in the boat and one in the lake, his tender acorns cracking on the canoe gunnel. Boys, of course, hate to smack their nether-regions, while at the same time they get a kind of perverse giggly pleasure out of falling in such an uncomfortable manner. All onlookers of the male variety groan and grimace and hunch over in discomfort when bearing witness to such a tragedy. With his pale face contorted in instant agony, my son teeters slow-motion overboard and into the lake. The cool water obviously plays a hand in hurrying his recovery.

In the end, one of the male cousins is crowned champion. With this knowledge, I unwittingly extol the virtues of the male athlete as superior to that of the fairer sex. I, too, I point out, was a hero in my day. Having heard enough, my wife challenges me to a duel.

My superior cunning, athleticism, and balance pays off (as well as the fact that I start the battle before she says “Go!”). I thus have her scrambling to find a foothold from the beginning, and in no time at all she tumbles into the cool lake water. Victory is mine. I am the greatest! Unfortunately, when you are a little heavier, even when you win the battle, you lose. As soon as I have managed to rid myself of the bow ballast, my weight in the stern throws the bow of the canoe high in the air, so that the sixteen-foot prospector looks more like a rocket ready for lift-off than a canoe ready to be paddled to shore. I feel immediately like the captain of the Titanic, and prepare to go down with the ship, joining my grumpy wife in the lake.

It's not pistols at fifty paces, a medieval joust, or a playground boxing match, but at the cottage it's a fair way of settling disputes.

Such is life, and a hard lesson for me, and for men, everywhere to learn. The rest of the evening is spent in relative silence. Supper is a fend for yourself, as my darling spouse has decided she is not hungry. All my peace offerings are rebuked. Life is a bit like gunnel bobbing. Sometimes you are better off just taking the fall, because often even when you win, you lose.

A Gathering of Loons

Come here, Norman ... hurry up. The loons! The loons!

They're welcoming us back.

—
Ethel Thayer in Ernest Thompson's On Golden Pond

We heard the first two loons flying overhead before we saw them settling on the lake. They were soon joined by our resident couple, as the duo that frequented our little bay floated in, hooting softly. I was about to head back to the cabin when I saw a third pair winging in from the north. The four on the lake let up a mournful wail. To my surprise, other loons started coming in from all directions — all landing with a great splash, already hooting and yodelling.

The loons arrived in pairs, perhaps coming from all of the surrounding lakes. They floated about in a small flotilla in front of our island, moving towards us and then away, seemingly uncertain of their direction. It was like a town council meeting, this gathering of loons. They stayed in the group, talking amongst themselves and drifting to and fro.

I've seen this on a few occasions in my life. The first time was as a youngster during a canoe trip in Algonquin Park. Forty loons or more gathered on the lake where we had set our camp. I remember my older brother was out fishing when the loons started arriving. He wound in his line and sat still, one person amongst all these birds. He drifted silently amongst the loons in his cedar strip canoe. So subtle and gentle were his paddling movements that the loons paid little attention. Then he cupped his big hands and blew into them, mimicking well the loon's crazy cry, wagging his fingers to get that staccato rhythm. Rather than being spooked, the loons seemed to answer back, arguing their point. After an hour or so, the loons started leaving, winging off in the directions they had come. The meeting was adjourned.

I saw this unique gathering of loons again some twenty-five years later, on a turquoise glacial lake in British Columbia's rugged interior. We had flown in from different directions for a tourism board meeting at a resort on Chilko Lake. A hundred loons also gathered together on the same lake in the late afternoon, discussed regional business, and then headed home.

Children bring so much energy to cottage life.

And now, here they are gathering on our lake, a smaller group of some fifteen to twenty, perhaps only a committee meeting this time. Maybe this was their own type of G8 Summit. Possibly they are meeting to discuss the problems that we humans bring to the lake, and to work out ways to combat them. Perhaps, in these bird's eyes, the cottagers that assemble each summer at the lakes is the true “gathering of loons.”

No matter the reason for the assemblage of these Common Loons, once again, it is a spectacular sight, with so many of these beautiful birds brought together. While their calls are usually hauntingly solo, here they hoot and yodel in a veritable symphony of voices.

I can't help but laugh at those that think it is time that the loon be replaced as the symbol of our wild lake country. “The Moose is the New Loon” is the rallying cry from cottage magazines and cottage marketers. Well, with all due respect to the moose, majestic, powerful, and very Canadian though it may be, the loon is still and always will be the symbol of our northern hinterland. I remember sitting by the campfire bewitched, light from the flames dancing across the white rock, when the silence of the night is pierced by the loon's cry, the wail of the insane. It is a call that is difficult to describe and impossible to forget. The guttural bawling moan of a moose is just not the same.

No one has heard the Common Loon — the mournful wails and crazy laughter that can haunt a still, dark summer's night — who will not be eternally affected by it or not associate it with the cottage on the lake. The loon has become the authentic representation of wilderness, and a vital component of it. As Henry David Thoreau said in
The Maine Woods
, “It is a very wild sound, quite in keeping with the place.”

The Sting

It was the first night of our summer vacation, our first night with the family at the cottage this year. My wife and I had settled into our boathouse bunkie. I'm afraid our boathouse is a modest one, not like some of the massive buildings you can admire on Millionaire's Row. Ours is practical, small and rustic, but charming and quaint. It has a big picture window that allows a magnificent view of the lake, and we like to swing the two wooden doors open wide so we can see the stars, watch the lights shimmering on the water, and hear and smell the outdoors. A big, framed, flowing mosquito net drapes down from the ceiling over our bed, making us feel like explorers on an African safari. It protects us from pesky bugs, but does not separate us from the night.

I arrive with an oil lamp after tucking the kids away in the main cottage, to find my wife in bed under the comforter reading. “I see there's a big wasp nest under the front peak,” she says nodding towards the roof front over the swinging doors.

“Really? Is it active?” I ask, and go to have a peak.

“I'm sure it is,” she says, “but we can look after it tomorrow in daylight. I think I have some of that foam wasp stuff in the cabin.”

By my thinking, with the wasps also tucked neatly in for the night, right now might be the time for a quick attack — and who needs the Raid. I look around and grab a paddle. My plan is simple: with one quick swing I'll bat the nest and its contents out into the lake and then I'll swing the doors shut quickly to neutralize any counterattack. My wife, seeing me walk forward with paddle cocked, begins to protest, but too late.

It almost works …

To be fair, it would have worked perfectly, if not for the sudden gust of wind. I batted the plump, pear-shaped nest just as a gust of wind blew the boathouse door shut. Like an exciting Wimbledon tennis match, the door expertly returned my serve. I did manage, most impressively I thought, considering I was using a canoe paddle, to make a nice backhand return volley. The nest hit the door once again, a second blow that, perhaps, only served to further anger the wasps. They spilled out and focussed their venom on me.

I did hear my wife laughing hysterically as I windmilled my arms and danced around the bunkie under attack. Amazingly, I was stung only once before I gracefully dived beneath the bug netting and onto the bed. The cloud of annoyed wasps buzzed the mesh. I'm not sure what you're thinking, but I'm considering myself a bit of a hero for ridding the boathouse of the venomous scourge. I half expect a big hug, to be smothered in kisses and a heartfelt “Thank you!”

Instead, I get: ”It's moments like this that make me wonder what possessed me to marry such an idiot.” I begin to answer but she cuts me off. “That was a rhetorical question!”

In the quiet time that follows, I'm left to muse about wasp nests and misadventures.

My father-in-law is a strong, burly man who used to be a navy diver. As such, he survived shark attacks, but a bite from a little tiny wasp could kill him. He suffered multiple stings while rescuing his son from a wasp attack, and has since become allergic. He drank one down once, presumably in a tot of rum, and had a severe reaction to a sting in his throat. My mother-in law hangs brown paper bags around whenever she is at the cottage. Her theory is that wasps and bees, being territorial, figure the bags are another's nest and stay away. Pointing out that the bags are covered with wasps does not change her opinion. Perhaps, it is her way of knocking off her husband.

“Oh, I tried everything to keep the wasps away,” wink, wink, nudge, nudge. “And still, in the end, they got him.”

Last summer, my oldest daughter tripped over a nest when she was playing some game of manhunt on the island. She was stung a dozen times. We heard her holler and then she darted out of the forest with a cloud of wasps in pursuit, like in some cartoon. We all dropped what we were doing and ran for the cabin — almost forgetting to let her in. If I'd had my paddle I could have staved off the attack. Not that such heroics would have done me any good.