Staying put at the cottage

When I sold my house in Ottawa at the end of May, my plan was to spend the summer at the cottage while I worked out where to move next. As it turns out, I’ve been running around so much that I’ve barely spent any time here at all — no more than 5 or 6 days in a row.

The amount of travel I’ve done is illustrated by a glance at the odometer of my new car. Bought in mid-June — only 3 months ago — it reads 10,000 km (6,000 miles). It used to take me at least a year to put that many miles (or kilometers) on my car.

This revelation made me decide it was time to stop moving — and stay put at the cottage — for a while. It’s been a lovely and quiet few weeks now and I’m feeling nice and relaxed. Nikita the dog and I have gotten into a bit of a routine. We walk around the bay most mornings, past my cousin’s place and up the ridge on the other side of the bay. After all the driving around, we both need the exercise.

Throughout the summer and now into the fall, there has been an incredible amount of rain here. The direct result is that the water level in the lake rises, sometimes rather rapidly. More than once, the dock has floated away. And more than once, I have jumped in the kayak to wrangle the wooden sections back to the shore.

After a few episodes of dock hunting, I decided to pile rocks on the dock. Now, I’ve done this before, but with just a few rocks and it really wasn’t very effective. This time, I was determined to weigh it down so it couldn’t go anywhere. It worked but there were so many rocks that there was not much room to walk around (it’s not a very big dock to start with). It was weirdly cool to walk on the dock while it was under several inches of water, with no concern for a sudden dunk in the lake when it is revealed that the section you are standing on is no longer supported at one end.

In addition to our exercise walks, Nikita and I take a stroll down to the lake in the early morning (as the sun was rising) and in the evening (as the sun was setting). The mornings are particularly magical. Often, curls of fog slide across the still water and visibility is pretty limited. Then, a breeze will move the fog aside, revealing a lone loon in the middle of the lake.