Girls’ Cottage Weekend

Barb Saunders | Jul 22, 2010

Girls’ cottage weekends are great, and they get better as we get older. The stories and chatter is more reflective. Our kids are almost grown, parents are becoming fragile or passing, marriages too. Our level of independence has been fully stretched and we have the loosening skin to prove it. We drink less, go to bed earlier and read more.

So armed with all this empowering stuff, I was quite comfortable to stay alone at the cottage after my girlfriends had headed back to Toronto. To be honest, I made the decision after a beer and a nap. It was just too good to leave. I had stayed alone at the cottage before, but this time I didn’t have the dog for company. I decided that the time alone was worth any nervousness I might feel after the sun went down.

Located in the Land O’Lakes area north of Kingston, our lake isn’t even on the map. If you mention “Spring Lake” at the nearest grocery store in Verona, people are polite, but clearly they’ve never heard of it. There are a lot of lakes, ponds and streams. In fact, the two little lakes connected to Spring Lake to the east are referred to as the ‘Polly Toads’, a name that I’ll definitely not mention in Verona.

Spring Lake has fewer than 20 cottages and attracts small fishing boats, canoes and kayaks. The tranquillity is incredible. My family has explored every nook and cranny of the lake, from my fisherman husband to my predatory children who would catch turtles, snakes, frogs and minnows. We have canoed or kayaked from the cottage, through culverts, over and around beaver dams, through swamps, down a waterfall (albeit small), all to get to Verona for a chocolate bar, or lunch if we’ve had the foresight to bring enough money.

The call of the Loons and, later in the evening, the Whip-poor-will are the sounds I look forward to most at the cottage. On this particular Sunday evening I had the cottage windows closed because it was a little chilly. I was absorbed in my reading when I glanced up at the full-length window to see a man gesturing to me from just outside. I jumped up, raised my fist in the air and yelled: ”NO. GO AWAY.” The intruder started to retreat.

He was thin with long wiry greying hair under an old straw hat, his kaki pants wet and torn at the knee and he wore a camouflage patterned life jacket. When he was safely off the deck, I opened the sliding door to deliver a couple more “NO. GO AWAYs,” when I heard his apologetic voice: “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you saw us down at the dock. My son’s kayak sprung a leak and we’re trying to repair it.”

I realized there were two of them. And indeed, the young one had his kayak belly up on my dock. I grabbed a roll of duct tape and was ready to hurl it down to them, when the man said: “No, we don’t need it. We have a repair kit. All we need is some paper towel to dry it, so it will adhere.”

I felt a little more confident at this point. They did seem to know what they were doing. I actually ventured outside with the paper towel to hand to him. He thanked me and apologized again for giving me such a fright. “My heart is still pounding,” he said. Mine was too.

I asked him where he was from. He didn’t say exactly, but he did say they had kayaked all the way from Verona. I was still a little suspicious and asked him a couple of questions. “How did you get through the culvert?” He answered aptly, “We had to go over it.” This was correct. Last year a large grill was fastened to the culvert, presumably to keep the beavers out. When he described their paddle west of the ‘Polly Toads’ he made the mistake of referring to the adjoining lake as ‘13 Island’ instead of ‘14 Island Lake.’ That’s when I decided to cut the conversation short and head back in to the safety of the cottage. I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Once the kayak was repaired, the man brought the extra paper towel to the deck. He apologized again, and this time, so did I.

When I got back to Toronto, I sent an email to the girls with this addendum: “P.S. I ended up staying Sunday night at the cottage and had a man visit at 8:30 pm. I’ll have to tell you about it in person. Let me just say that both our hearts were pumping! And yes, John knows all about it.”    

We women are not usually at a loss for things to say, but this experience will give us some fuel for the fire.