A Post a Day in May 2019 #4: Cottage life (1)

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I have pledged to write a new post for this blog every day in May.

I realized with amazement the other day that this summer will mark our 20th anniversary of owning a cottage in Manitoba. Wow. I really should start believing that I know what I’m doing as a cottager.  

I’ve lived in Manitoba for almost 30 years — essentially, that’s half my life — and 20 of those include the privilege and stress of owning a “leisure property”. Ha! Leisure. That’s a good one. Our cottages have always been working cottages — yes, there’s a lot of fun involved, but there’s also project after project that keeps the place standing and habitable. 

Herewith, the owner's version of 'the cottage life': 

"You should invite me to your cottage," a friend said to me a while back. I could see the image bubble over her head -- a deck, a dock, a drink and her children playing happily on the beach in the distance. Nice, but not...well, not real. At least, not in my cottage life. 

For us, owning a cottage means keeping calm when we want peace and quiet, but the neighbours want to party. It’s about trying to make a decent meal on day six of being at the cottage when fresh fruit and veg have run out and there aren’t, after all, enough chicken breasts in the freezer to feed the guests -– and the nearest town is 30km down the gravel road and highway. It means keeping my temper in the face of yet another do-it-yourself project that was described as simple and straightforward by the hardware store guy, but which has turned into a mess of mismatched pieces and instructions not even a genius could understand (and the hardware store is down that same length of road the grocery store is). 

 And it’s definitely about humbling myself in front of the neighbours and asking for advice: Re-roofing the shed comes to mind. We weren't sure if we had laid the shingles correctly over the peak of the roof, so I was deputized to ask the neighbour, whom I most usually asked to turn down his music, if he would come over to check. He did, and we had done it correctly. Phew. 

 I've also had to ask for hands-on help, especially with things that are just too damn heavy for us to manage, individually or together: the boat motor, for example. That was one hundred pounds of awkward weight that we simply could not manage ourselves. 

Ah yes, the cottage life. Grand, eh?  

There are bugs, just about everywhere, just about all the time. ATVs tearing up the trails. Personal water craft buzzing the shoreline. Trucks roaring down the road. Oh yes, the joys of having a cottage on a lake in accessible Canadian wilderness. 

 And yet, despite these drawbacks, it is grand: totally and absolutely grand.

For us, owning a cottage is a lifestyle, an affordable luxury, a second home we enjoy all year round, whenever we can muster the energy to pack up the car and cat and get out of the city.

We haven’t yet, even after 20 years, perfected the art (science?) of getting everything together and setting off. It still takes reams of lists and endless trips between car and house to get everything stowed, but as soon as we hit the highway, and the cat settles down, we enter an altered state. We’re off. There’s no turning back. 

What awaits is a splendid lake view. A deck that catches morning and evening sun. A cottage with comfortable chairs, good reading lights and decent beds, and a fridge with a dedicated spot for the vermouth. 

Yes, we have projects from hell. And noise when we want peace. And all those other bothersome things that occur when a random collection of people come together in a cottage subdivision and have their way with the wilderness. But nothing can take away the view. Or the satisfaction of installing a low-flush toilet or putting down new flooring ourselves. Of putting up new kitchen cabinets ourselves. Of paddle-boarding solo on the lake. Of seeing the deer wander through the lot.   

Yes, a cottage doubles one's troubles of ownership, but it also increases one's joy of active and outdoor living. At the very least that’s a wash. And on a good day, it’s much more. It's the joy of sighting a Pileated Woodpecker in the trees. It's the sound of the lake lapping onto the rocky shore. It's the warmth of the sun on my face. 

 All that is a major bonus, no matter the projects on the list or the distance to the grocery store.  
Early-morning view from the lake-side deck at Clifftop Cottage. 


Thanks for reading. 

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