luxury of silence

This past weekend, Jeff and I went up to the cottage for our last visit before the ice came in. Some people think we're crazy for going up in such cold weather, but to tell you the truth, I far prefer visiting the cottage in this kind of weather than during midsummer. For one thing, it's far less crowded, both at the cottage, on the roads, and on the lake. A part of me also likes the slight discomfort and hassle of not-quite-perfect weather, Nature's reminder that we shouldn't get too complacent.

And I certainly got my wish. When we arrived at the lake, we found that the road leading to the cottagers' parking lot and our motorboat was blocked:





Jeff ended up walking around the small bay, getting the motorboat, and breaking a path through the thin layer of ice with a paddle:



Notice the paddle lying on the ice after slipping out
of Jeff's gloves partway across. Fortunately there was another
paddle in the boat.


When we finally arrived at the cottage, we discovered that the power was out. This meant no electric lights or heating, no electric oven or microwave. We briefly considered turning back, also because there was a nonzero chance that the thin layer of ice in the bay would become too thick for the motorboat the next day. In the end, we opted for the adventure.

Our own cabin had no source of heat, so we decided to stay in Jeff's father's cabin and keep the fire going in the woodstove. Until the cabin warmed up, I wore about six layers on top: a T-shirt, turtleneck, fleece jacket, fleece vest, another fleece jacket, and my Gortex jacket, gradually removing one layer at a time. It was at least 20 minutes before I removed the first layer. :-) A small pot of water on top of the wood stove for hot chocolate took about an hour for the water to start boiling.

We took our steaming mugs of hot chocolate and sat out on the deck, watched the lake for while, reveling in the luxury of silence. Living downtown, we rarely experience complete silence; there are always traffic noises, construction going on nearby, the electrical hum of appliances.

Dinner? Pasta with tomato sauce heated up in a pan on the woodstove, ready-made salad (Jeff mixed the salad with the dressing right in the bag), French loaf, red wine. Everything was delicious. The sunlight was gone by 6 pm, so we lit a lot of candles and a gas lantern; we also had small headlamps. We had planned to play Jeff's new Lord of the Rings board game and have a dessert of S'Mores Pop Tarts ( I chose the dessert, can you tell?) but we decided to go to bed instead, were asleep by 9:30 pm.

It was a wonderful cottage visit, one of my favorites this year. On the way home, we both agreed that even if we had known there was no power, we still would have gone up.

November/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ