Still in a Daze at the Cottage

by Ross, James 1744-1827;

  Seeing nothing, I relax, but the brief feeling of horror means that I have to climb from my bed and step outside to stand behind a tree. Before returning to my bunk, I look up at the amazing night sky, brilliant with stars, not a light around to lessen the show. In my periphery, I see the soft black form again. I hear the gentle flutter of its wings, and then, to my consternation, I feel the bat lightly brush by my hair — bed-head hair, sharply creased and shaped by my pillow, standing skyward like a mountain ridge. I hold both hands on my neck and scurry into the boathouse, where I duck inside the protective netting.

  I don’t remember the bat returning this night, but I do dream. I sit up in the bed and stare vacantly down at my wife, sleeping like an angel beside me, her breathing soft and quiet, looking so virtuous and peaceful. It is a lovely vision, only slightly tainted by the occasional snort and the little puddle of drool pooling on her pillow. I smile down on her beauty, and she opens one eye and screams. I bend towards her neck … and she smacks me!

  “What are you doing!” she growls. She has woken me from my dream and I feel disoriented. I try to explain myself, but find I’m gibbering about the creamy skin of a girl I knew in school. She scowls at me, rolls over, and puts the pillow over her head. With opportunity lost, I fall back and run my tongue around the inside of my mouth, searching for long, sharp incisors.

  Thankfully, in morning’s light, the whole incident seems forgotten by my wife. I do wonder why my bat friend has begun to visit so regularly. Maybe I’ve been writing too much about a certain robin lately, and batman feels excluded. Or, perhaps, ruminating about bats and vampires is simply my way of reaching out to my middle daughter, who has become absorbed by a certain series of Twilight books, and spends much of her cottage days curled up on the dock lounger reading. Maybe, she will pay more attention to my writing now.

  With such batty thoughts swirling around inside my head, I bring my wife her morning coffee on the dock. She is usually appreciative of this gesture, but today, whether predicated by a sudden recollection of happenings in the night or perhaps because of something more sinister, she bares her teeth and hisses at me — and, is it just my vivid imagination, or do I detect two little puncture marks on her slender neck?

  Being Green

  “It’s not easy being green,” or so said a famous frog some thirty years ago.

  In fact, at that time nobody really wanted to be green. Green was an uncomfortable colour. Being green was for the eccentric crank living in the cottage down the lake. Mr. Green was the one who everybody complained about when they got together, the one who left his shoreline in such a ragged state, whose wild weeds went to seed and blew over everybody else’s well-maintained cottage lawns.

  He was the one who refused to go on the grid, who paddled to his cottage, whose dock stood out along the shore because it wasn’t stained a pretty rustic redwood. The birds who sought solace in his unkempt waterfront were the only ones that didn’t complain about his indifferent approach to cottaging.

  Well, it is becoming easier to be green now. With the environment and the cottage so inextricably linked, more and more cottagers are hopping on the green bandwagon. It has become, in fact, the new rage, the cottage craze.

  You know it is the “in” thing to do when the marketers are on board. Magazines are putting out their green issues so you can read about all things eco-friendly. Automobile manufacturers have their eco cars, so you can drive to the cottage while saving the environment and saving money at the pump. Have a cottage project? Home building centres promote their green building materials. Need to clean up afterwards? Go with the greener cleaner. Sure, many of the natural products cost a little more, but hey, ride the wave — people will pay more to do the right thing, or is it the popular thing?

  Many of the big name box stores are hitching their wagon to the green craze, offering eco-friendly products in aisle fourteen. The trouble is, you still have to walk through the chemical stench of the lawn-care section to access the low-impact building materials. The green issue of magazines, which tout all things environmentally friendly in their stories, still contain inconsistencies in some of the advertisements that do not fit in very well with the narrative message. Business is business though, and green is good as long as you can make money.

  Perhaps I’m being too cynical. The green wave is a good wave; it is nice to have it moving in the right direction, to have the businesses getting on board, and it is great to have choices easily available to us.

  As cottagers, we are privileged to share in the natural environment, but at the same time we have a responsibility as custodians. I promote a lazy approach to shoreline maintenance. Do as little as possible. Stop cutting the grass and smothering it with chemicals. Try to get it growing back naturally again. If your shoreline is left as natural as possible, water runoff gets lots of filtration and comes into the lake very clean. The buffer zone provided by a shoreline’s vegetation helps preserve wildlife habitats, providing shelter and food for animals, birds, and aquatic life.

  In essence, I had jumped aboard the green bandwagon. In fairness, I had been raised to show respect to the wilderness, to allow a natural shoreline, to use biodegradable soaps, and to avoid chemical solutions — but there was a lot less awareness of environmental materials then. With the overwhelming amount of eco-information available today, I realize we did many things wrong, but we made an effort.

  Making an effort to minimize our impact is the most important thing. Do it because it is right, not because it is the new rage. If only we had followed Mr. Green, that old cottage eccentric’s lead all those years ago. He was ahead of his time. Unfortunately, most of us prefer to run with the pack. After all, it’s not always easy being green.

  A Beaver Tail

  The beavers attacked at midnight.

  At the time, I didn’t know that the battle had started. I was tucked into my comfortable bed in the boathouse bunkie, just drifting off into a land of sweet dreams, when I heard the slap of a beaver tail on the water. It sounded very close. There was a hard smack and a splash, and then the night was silent once again. I sat up and looked out through the open double doors over the lake. In the glow of the moon I could see the ripples spreading outwards — otherwise there was nothing except dark water all around. I lay back down.

  Suddenly there were two more hard smacks on the water, hard slaps and splashes. One was off to my right, about twenty metres away. The other happened a similar distance to the left. I sat up on the edge of the bed. Then the hair on the back of my head stood to attention as I heard the shrill, cat-like battle cry of a beaver. It sounded as if it came from high on the land this time. In retrospect, I believe it was the beavers’ plan to quietly surround my boathouse and then to chew their way through the structure’s supports.

  What they hadn’t reckoned on were my two faithful huskies. Having heard the sound of slapping tails, they had trotted inquisitively down the trail to investigate. I jumped from my bed and peered out the door. I saw my brave dogs fleeing up the path to the cottage with tails tucked. Two plump rodents were in pursuit. A third beaver stood quite close to my position. Seeing me, he let out a purring screech. I slunk back into the shadows, wondering if the attackers would be daring enough to enter the open doors.

  I also wondered if it might be prudent to wake my sleeping spouse. In the end, I decided against it, not wanting to add to the general panic. I also couldn’t help but notice that the sound of her snoring had an unsettling effect on the creatures. I’m sure the strange sawing noise made them envision a gigantic beaver trapped inside, and not knowing whether this monster was friend or foe certainly made them quite hesitant to take the battle indoors.

  I cast an eye around the door jamb; the beaver’s evil glare was picked up in the moonlight. “A nickel for your thoughts you bucktoothed varmint,” I whispered hoarsely, doing my best Clint Eastwood impersonation. I wondered what had instigated this behaviour, what had caused these normally docile creatures to display such anger. />
  Suddenly, I knew. I had a fleeting recollection of us arriving at the island the day before to a mess of downed ash, birch, and maple saplings. I had cleaned up the brush and piled it by our burn barrel, cutting up the thicker pieces for the firebox. I thought of it as tidying up, but the beavers obviously saw it as thievery. I knew what I’d done, and now I had to save my dogs, my cottage, and my wife. To do this — I had to think like a beaver.

  Then it came to me. I had one chance at victory, one trick up my sleeve. I crouched low and did a military peek around the corner of the doors. The closest beaver’s attention was temporarily elsewhere, stealing back the branches from the brush pile. I saw that the other two attackers had my timid dogs cornered on the cottage porch. I grabbed a paddle from the rack, a beaver tail, and reached out through the boathouse doors as far as I could over the lake. I smacked the water hard, and then whacked the paddle on the lake again, before quickly hiding back inside. I had risked it all on a flimsy theory that if a tail slap was the signal to start the attack, then perhaps a double whack might signal its end. Thankfully, it worked. The beavers immediately retreated, withdrawing into the lake. Our cottage was saved.

  The following morning my wife, awake and refreshed after a good night’s sleep, paused on her way up the path to the cottage. She stared at me. I was waist-deep in the lake, dragging sections of firewood into the water. My canine companions were helping, pulling branches out into the bay with their teeth. I had considered it prudent to declare peace with the wildlife with which I share this place. To her questioning gaze I responded simply, “Coffee is on. I’ll be up in a minute to tell you a little beaver tale.”

  Now, in response to my reader’s questioning looks: I say yes, true story … well, kind of. I took certain dramatic licence, and made myself the protagonist of the piece. My two Sibes were the true heroes when the rascally beavers invaded our island at midnight, chasing them immediately back into the lake from whence they had come, while I cowered in my bunk. Thankfully, dogs can’t read.

  Wet and Wild — Cottage Fun

  My humble island cottage is the main character in my prose, but I surround the place with activity — family, friends, pets, and neighbours — and fill it with adventure and misadventure. As I am sure is the case with most cottagers, stories seem to emanate from even the dullest cottage routine. This is a fun place to be!

  Fifty Shades of Cottaging

  If you can’t beat them, join them. That’s what I like to say.

  I have put a copy of my own book, Cottage Daze, on the cottage bookshelf in the hopes that our summer guests will pick it up and give it a read. Unfortunately, someone has smuggled a copy of some book called Fifty Shades of Grey over on the boat, and it seems to be getting more play, if you’ll pardon the expression. Who brought it? I’m not sure. The teacher? The teacher’s wife? Grandma or, heaven forbid, my mother-in-law?

  Checking the weekly best-seller lists, my book lags well behind the whole Fifty Shades trilogy and, also, distantly beneath a book called The Hunger Games. It is the latter volume that occupies my middle daughter’s mind, thankfully. She has read it a couple of times, and now spends her time at the cottage running through the island forest tracking down her brother. I see her sitting on the cabin porch fashioning some kind of bow out of a willow and string and sharpening sticks with my jackknife. Not having read the book, I can only assume that the pointed sticks are for nothing more sinister than roasting marshmallows over the evening fire.

  I find the other book a little bit more disconcerting. While I am not displeased with the sales of my own work, I walk around lamenting the taste of the reading public. Who would find a book of crass erotica more appealing than my own literary genius? My book critic wife, never one to condone my complaining, simply gives me a piece of advice. “Perhaps, if you had spiced up your own book a bit, you’d be getting full-figured advances too.” Then, she adds the warning, “But mention anything about me and your days will come to a quick end, literally.”

  Sure, while a little spice might titillate my readers, any stories I could tell would surely land me in trouble. How can I tell the tales of the female junior rangers who trained on shore when I was a teenager — leading to those many after-dark canoe visits? Besides, my editor is not so liberal and lenient; I get censored when I talk about roasting wieners. This best-selling Shades scribe seems to be able to write anything, and it just sells books.

  Well, if spice is what’s needed, then spice I will add. I recall one erotic episode that occurred at our cottage. Wanting to add to our working kennel of Siberian huskies, I had brought my intelligent and beautiful female Timba for a visit. Timba was in heat. Joining her was Yukon King, a strapping, handsome, well-muscled, blond, blue-eyed Adonis. He playfully licked her face and nibbled on her delicate ears with gentle teeth — then he followed around behind her with his tongue lolling on the ground. The end result of that romantic interlude is our young dog, Boomer, who lies beside the path to the dock today, chewing on my wife’s bathing suit. As I pass, he holds her bikini top with his front paws and pulls on it with his teeth, snapping it like beef jerky.

  My wife has not really delved into my own literary offering, but I do find her deep into the Shade trilogy, sitting in her Muskoka chair by the water. No matter, she seems happy and smiling, and so absorbed in her reading that she is completely unaware that our young dog is nearby tailoring her favourite swimsuit. Seeing her sitting there reading, her face twinkling and flushed, and her in such good humour, I throw her a flirty smile and what I fancy is a very suave double eyebrow raise. It is a gesture that may have even worked in my younger days, but today it elicits nothing more than a scowl and an eye roll, and then she walks to the end of the dock and plunges into the cool lake waters. There seems to be a lot of swimming going on this summer.

  Interestingly, the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey coincided with a National Hockey League lockout, and, therefore, with not much to occupy our simple male minds, and this fine book making the rounds amongst the ladies, I sensed opportunity. Skulking around the cottage with pen and pad, surely I would manage enough material for a future best-seller — Fifty Shades of Cottage Daze!

  The Newest Rage

  “Why not just sit down?”

  I thought it was a reasonable question, but it created quite a stir. The other eight people taking the lesson with me stopped what they were doing and stared.

  This was a few years ago, and I was on a writing assignment, hired by an editor to put together a family travel piece on the tropical paradise of Maui. I know, it sounds nice, but it was truly hard work. The island’s PR people had lined up a bevy of bizarre activities for us — including this one, a new paddling rage that had begun in the Hawaiian Islands and was slowly spreading eastward. I was sure it would find its way to the lakes of cottage country before long.

  It was called stand-up paddle boarding, or SUP for short. You stood on a large surfboard and paddled yourself along with a long-handled, single-blade paddle. Well, that was the idea anyway. I had no sooner uttered my inane remark than my board slid forward; I landed hard on my back with an exhalation of air and then slowly rolled into the ocean. My sympathetic family cheered me on from shore.

  I pulled myself from the water, and raised my body unsteadily to an almost standing position on the surfboard. I smiled meekly at the instructor, and then fell forward toward the bow of the board, tumbling once more into the salty surf with my mouth half open in a subdued screech. I surfaced sputtering and coughing — but steeled to the fact that I wasn’t going to let this thing beat me.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” said the petite instructress sarcastically. I clamoured apprehensively to a standing position and tried in vain to maintain my balance. She tried to show the group the proper paddling technique, while I wobbled back and forth creating my own waves. I attempted a paddle stroke, missed the ocean all together, fell sideways, and, in doing so, sent my board bouncing across the surface of the aqua waters like a flat skip
ping stone, slicing the feet out from under a number of fellow participants. I crawled back on board, muttering apologies. I stood again, and for a brief second felt like I had mastered it. Then, I swear I was hit by a massive rogue tsunami wave, although nobody else would back me on this point. My body was catapulted skyward and my paddle javelined ahead directly into the instructor’s midsection, sending her and her fancy dry Lycra paddling suit into the sea. My lesson was over.

  Without lessons (I believe the instructor quit her job on that day), my family grabbed the big surfboards and joined in. In no time at all, my well-balanced wife and our four little twerps were mastering this new sport, paddling out on the distant swells and then back in with relative ease. They spun the boards around their paddles and were soon trying to ride the breaking waves near shore. I sat on the beach in shame, conscious of the nasty looks of the other paddlers angled my way.

  “Can we get one of these boards for the cottage?” asked my youngest.

  “Much too dangerous,” I replied. “And besides, it’s just a passing fad, a momentary fancy, soon to go the way of pet rocks, hula hoops, reality TV (hopefully), and the Bay City Rollers.”

  At least that was my wish at the time — but over the last few summers the big paddling boards have made an appearance here on our lakes. On a calm day they come out, infesting the water like dock spiders. I try to capsize them with my ski boat. Not really, but it would be fun. One show-off even offers yoga lessons out on the lake. And why not, the core workout is outstanding, my belly was sore for days after my Maui escapade, as were my kid’s abs from laughing, and the instructor’s midsection from being paddled.