“Of course, the waterfront will look much better when there isn’t ice on the lake,” I tell my husband. We stand shivering in a few inches of melting snow and mud, facing the waters of Lake Magog, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships’ cottage country. A cloud has just come over the sun, making the whole area seem chilly and dark.
We have come to see the cottage we might be renting in July, three months from now, since I don’t trust photos to tell me what things look like, especially when it comes to summer rental cottages. In particular, I wanted to see if the waterfront would be suitable for our five year old grand-daughter, if it provided some place where she could paddle in shallows when she wasn’t learning to swim.
When owners of cottages take photos they never really show this aspect. They think that showing the view from the deck is enough. In contrast, my mind drifts automatically to kids falling into great depths off wharfs. I want to know how deep the water is at the shore, and whether it is rocky, sandy or pebbly. This one seems okay. Where the ice has melted a bit near shore, we can see pebbles on the bottom.
My husband broods, mourning the cottage we used to rent on Lake Malagua. It has been booked for this summer since last summer, when we betrayed it by going to Nova Scotia to see relatives and enjoy the ocean for a change. Now it has no time available for us. I don’t know why he longs for it; maybe because everything was new there, three years ago, whereas today we have been looking at other cottages on other lakes, which aren’t new. Which are, in fact, quite old and dilapitated.
Of course, a Quebec summer cottage, seen in April, never looks its best. Having been boarded up all winter, its air is damp, musty and stale, and its furniture looks like it’s slowly decaying. It takes a real act of faith to imagine a hot summer sun shining in on that worn carpet, that dumpy sofa, that sagging bed, making it all look charmingly quaint instead of pathetic.
In the same way, the exterior of such a cottage never really looks inviting in mud season. One must look beyond the deep, snow-filled ruts that suggest someone else has had trouble pulling in here, past the branches scattering the grounds from winter storms, past the bare branches of the trees they fell from. One has to try to see, in the mind’s eye, the hot days under the leafy shade, on dry grass, with bees humming in the bushes that now are so skeletal.
The cottage behind us, boarded up for the winter, looks uninviting. I note that there is at least a wooden deck, one built on the ground like a patio, with a wooden bench circling its periphery for enjoying, perhaps, a glass of wine at sunset on some seemingly remote-from-now evening in summer, when we will (I hope) be wearing sandals and feeling much warmer than we do now. Since I will probably be stuck on this deck with a stack of books for two weeks we rent as I recover from the total knee replacement surgery I’m having next weekend, I really want a deck with a view. It also has to be close to the water; I want to be able to see what’s happening down at the shoreline, yet still be close enough to limp into the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. And to reach the water (assuming I’ll be able to walk at all), I don’t want to have to totter down a long, steep, stairless slope and then toil back up again, painfully.
Today we already have seen two cottages that would have demanded just that of my poor old knee. Both were rejected for that reason, as well as for being deep in trees, with no view of the lake. Cottage owners argue that trees provide the renters some privacy from people on the lake and are good to keep the cottage from overheating on hot days. But who wants to sit outside circled closely by trees, however cool the air might be there on a hot day? I want to see boats going by, see hawks swooping down to get fish, see the sunset streaking a big sky.
On this deck, at present, there is no deck furniture set out; it’s probably stowed away in the cottage itself. So is everything else. And the door is locked. Because the elderly owner has recently had a heart attack, he has been unable to meet us here to show us the inside.
This being the Age of the Internet we have with us, of course, photos obtained from a website. Unfortunately, I have just discovered that I mistakenly printed these photos from the wrong website, so what I hold in my hand doesn’t match what I am seeing around me. I didn’t realize that at first; I kept wondering why the brown bungalow wasn’t blue. When I figured out my mistake, I felt ridiculous. We peek in through a few windows to see what we can see: a small enclosed porch; a tiny bedroom with nice bunk bed, a patch-work quilt neatly folded at the foot of the lower bed; nothing else. Curtains are drawn over the other windows. For all I know, it could be terrible inside.
Still, I focus on that pristine little bedroom with its patchwork quilt. Its neatness and the fact that the quilt looked clean and well-kept suggests the rest of the cottage will be, as well. And it looks tasteful. That’s the kind of quilt I myself would own, I think hopefully. Later we will find the correct site online and see how the cottage really looks inside; for now, that too must be taken on faith.
This summer money is short, especially if we will be staying at a cottage for two weeks instead of our usual one. (Most cottage owners now only rent for two week or more). We used to pay $700 a week. Now cottages run around a thousand a week and up, many without dishwashers, t.v. or decks, or even private waterfronts. I looked longingly at some of them online, the ones that at least had decks and sandy beaches. I could so easily imagine my grand-daughter building sandcastles there while I watched. But really, two weeks would require too much money, especially since we’d also have a rental car to pay for. This cottage, amazingly, is only $850 a week, plus a hefty safety desposit. We can afford it with the help of our daughter, who has insisted on paying half.
As we stagger back to the car through the remaining snow and thick mud, I try to imagine this driveway green with summer grass, lined with summer flowers, shaded by green, leafy trees and shrubs. At the car, I turn to look back as I shake snow out of my shoes. There is a clearing behind the cottage, lightly treed. One could play badminton there, the net strung between those two trees. Not me, of course, but everyone else. I could be sitting on that small stone patio, the one that’s now covered with broken branches and debris from winter storms, sipping coffee perhaps in a deck chair, my bandaged knee stretched out in front of me as I enjoy the sight of people leaping into the air to hit the birdie and whap it back to their opponents. Later, we will eat dinner on the front deck and watch the sunset over the lake, listening to the lap of water nearby, the sound of birdcall, the sigh of branches.
Around me, the wind blows gustily today. I get in the car. It takes faith to believe that Summer will come, eventually, just as it took faith to believe, during this past, miserable winter, that Spring would eventually come. I tell myself that I will believe that time spent here will be okay. And that I will be back at this spot in July. I hope.
