Every year, Jeff, JBR and I try to make it up to Canoe Lake in time for ice-out, an event which usually occurs in late April and early May. It's tricky timing, since it's difficult to predict exactly when the ice thaws off the lake. Jeff even started an
online poll for friends and family on the topic.
Because of the unpredictability of the event, it also makes it hairy to schedule our regular lives around this time since, with a couple of days' notice, we may have to drop everything and head up north. I'm sure some of our friends think we're nuts. What's the big deal about ice melting? I mean, it's JUST ICE. Go open your freezer door and put some ice cubes in a glass and watch that, for Pete's sake.
I won't try to explain why Jeff and JBR want to be at the lake for ice-out, though I could probably guess. I'm sure the motivation for each is somewhat different, as is mine.
So I'll just try to stick to explaining why ice-out is so important to me.
I have to begin with my attachment to the cottage. I didn't have any, at first. It was Jeff's dad's cottage, and Jeff's family had gone there every summer. He had much more of an attachment than I did, though I enjoyed being there, enjoyed the beautiful scenery. It was Algonquin Park itself that held more emotional significance for me, and especially Canoe Lake.
My family used to go camping every summer when we kids were little, and frequently we'd go tent camping or car camping in Algonquin Park. I have strong memories of campfires and roasting marshmallows, of swimming in the cold waters of the lakes, of walking the trails, of going on day canoe trips. I'm sure we paddled past the Ridpath cottage many times.
Years later, I started going up to the cottage with Jeff. I remember Jim and Diane dropping by to visit. I'm pretty sure Dad and Ruth and Kaarel were there, too, but I most clearly remember Jim and Diane. Those of you who have lost loved ones have probably noticed this, how every memory becomes so much more significant after they're gone. That's where the line in my
Homecoming song came from, by the way: "Each moment is a gift I take with me: a memory." I think part of me wrote that song for my brother.
When Jim and Diane died in a car accident two years later, Jeff and I went up to the cottage after the funeral. It was a time of grieving, but I did find a measure of peace in the surrounding forest and the lake. Pain, too...I kept remembering how much Jim had loved the outdoors, and Algonquin Park...but I was determined not to let my grief turn good memories into bad ones.
Over the years, especially as I became more integrated into the Ridpath family (which wasn't hard :-)), I also grew to love the cottage and the lake because of the memories that Jeff and I were creating there on our own.
And in the end, all these experiences distilled into my own emotional attachment to the lake and cottage, but especially the lake. I've always been a big water fan, both saltwater and fresh. I love the sound of the waves, the rain hissing across the lake, the sound a paddle makes as it dips into the water.
I've always seen ice-out is a unique time in the year when the lake hesitates just before waking up for the warmer weather; it yawns, stretches, shakes itself. I love to be around when that happens.
So much in our lives can be produced at will, manufactured, enhanced, reconstructed. I'm all for technology, but there's always a part of me drawn to events like ice-out, which are completely at the whim of nature, especially ones which are as dramatic as the thawing of ice off an entire lake.
I remember standing on the dock of the cottage, feeling the wooden boards shudder beneath my feet as large pieces of ice were grinding up against the edge of the dock, buckling and shattering, bits of ice spraying across my feet.
I remember going outside the cottage in the middle of the night to listen to the groaning of the ice echo across the lake, like a huge and slumbering beast turning sleepily in the darkness.
I remember drifting in a canoe with Jeff in the middle of the lake near the end of ice-out, the thin shards of ice tinkling musically around us as the wind rippled across the water. I will always remember that sound.
Definitely NOT the same as watching an ice cube melting in a glass. :-)
Anyway, we plan to take off for the cottage later this week. We got a report yesterday from someone on the lake (she and her husband run the permit office there) that the ice just turned black, usually a good indicator of an impending thaw.
If the ice hasn't started breaking up, we won't be able to get the boat across to the cottage, in which case we may just turn around and come home, or (more likely) choose to stay somewhere nearby to wait a day or two in hopes that the ice goes out soon.
Chances are good that we'll miss the exact moment of ice-out again, that we'll catch the time just before or just after, but we'll still find a way to enjoy our time up north, I'm sure.
I'd rather take the chance than not. Keeps life more interesting that way, don't you think? :-)
As you can tell from most of the latter photos in today's Blathering, Annie and Sara are now proud owners of two guinea pigs, their very first pets! They've named them "Boo" and "Stripe".
Today's Blatherpics:
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I took this cottage sunrise photo taken last year. I did not enhance or change this photo at all and believe me, the sunrise was even more gorgeous in real life!
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Jeff and Jim on Canoe Lake, 12 years ago. See that thing Jim's doing with his hand, with it resting on his leg, palm-up? I do that, too, and have also seen my dad do it. Must be a genetic thing. :-)
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Annie and Sara with their new guinea pigs, just outside the pet store yesterday afternoon. Photo by my dad.
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Sara's guinea pig, Boo.
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Annie's guinea pig, Stripe.
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Saturday, April 20, 2002 at 11:06AM 
