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After 10 eventful days on the road, covering more than 2500 km by car, 28 km by foot and who knows how many by boat, it is time. Time for solitude, serenity, reflection. Time for staying in one familiar and cherished place, time for falling asleep at night to the wail of the sad and crazy loon calling in the darkness, time for waking up to misty mornings and still, dark water. Is time for cabin life.
Would that I could share with you the smells and sounds and not just the photographs and stories! The fragrance of the pine, the evocative call of the loon, the quiet of lake mornings, when the mist rises mystically from the still water, the humming of the hummingbird’s wings outside my window and the noisy chatter of an upstart squirrel.
I arrive at my cabin in the early afternoon. The gravel driveway is completely overgrown and I accidentally drive right by it. I back up the car, turn down what I think must be tire tracks and proceed downhill. Large branches that have fallen during the two years I have been away make menacing crumbling sounds under the car.
At the bottom of the driveway sits my haven: almost one acre of lakefront property with a 12 m2 cabin. The rustic cabin is nestled among hemlocks and maples facing the water of Lake Molega, which is situated more or less smack in the middle of Nova Scotia. I have called the place “Nature’s Nest” and have posted a wooden sign on a tree with the name and a picture of a loon drawn by artist and close friend Trine Jensen.
Two years have passed since I last stayed in the cabin, so a bit of work awaits before I can settle in. First I have to remove the canoe from the cabin. It’s a bit like removing the first piece from a Chinese puzzle, because the canoe pretty well takes up the whole of the diagonal. Once I have manoeuvred it outside, I have to drag the canoe down to the water’s edge, but I meet with a hurdle. While I have been away, a beaver has chomped its way through two birch trees and they are now blocking the canoe path. I leave the canoe where it is until I can find my saw and cut the felled birch tree in two and lug it to one side.
Back up in the cabin I sweep and dust. Spiders scurry away. Mouse turds roll. I fetch water from the lake and wash the windows and the kitchen table. I unpack the air mattress and inflate it, unpack the bed linen and make the bed. Things start to look cosy. I turn on the gas, light the pilot lamps and bake some rye bread with the home-ground flour I was given by the hosts at one of the Bed & Breakfasts I visited. The cabin starts to smell cosy.
By now, dusk is falling. I light the kerosene lamp, filling the cabin with a homey, orange glow. I go outside and look in the window, enjoying the sight. Back inside I eat the freshly baked bread and some powdered pumpkin and carrot soup. After washing the dishes I sit down and read for a bit before going outside in the darkness to brush my teeth. I go to bed and read some more.
Finally, I blow out the flame in the kerosene lamp, turn off my portable reading lamp and snuggle under the comforter. I lie in the total, muffling silence and darkness, eyes open, listening to the quiet. Then I hear the evocative call of the loon echoing along the lake. Now I know that I have come home to Canada and fall happily asleep.
If you want to imagine what it is like at night in my cabin, then follow this link. Close your eyes and listen to the sad, lonely, haunting and eerie sound of the loon.
