{"id":21131,"date":"2022-05-14T00:35:14","date_gmt":"2022-05-14T04:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=21131"},"modified":"2022-05-14T00:41:01","modified_gmt":"2022-05-14T04:41:01","slug":"eisode-581-cottage-life-not-always-glorious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=21131","title":{"rendered":"EISODE 581 COTTAGE LIFE…NOT ALWAYS GLORIOUS"},"content":{"rendered":"
EPISODE 581   COTTAGE LIFE \u2026NOT ALWAYS GLORIOUS<\/p>\n

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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
may 13, 2022<\/div>\n

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NORTH BAY: SUMMER 1965<\/div>\n

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\u201cWould you like to spend a couple of days at our cottage?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cSure.\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
That invitation sounded great.  A couple of days all to ourselves at<\/div>\n
a Northern Ontario cottage.   Visions of gin and tonic served on a sunny<\/div>\n
wood deck with a northern lake stretched out below with a dock and<\/div>\n
motor boat and arm sunny evenings with a campfire and marshmallows.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Well we discovered that cottage life is not all its trumped up to be.<\/div>\n
The cottage was high above the lake.   No deck.  Really it was<\/div>\n
a garage built under a canopy of pine, cedar and tag alder.  Home<\/div>\n
to a million blood consuming insects.  <\/div>\n

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The safest place was inside the one room cottage.  It was big enough<\/div>\n
to park a car but not much more.  Yes it was really a garage.  Some itinerant<\/div>\n
vandal had ripped the screening from the windows.  To open them was to<\/div>\n
invite the little blood consuming creatures in for dinner.<\/div>\n

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There was one bed.  A place of safety as the sun settled and night<\/div>\n
arrived  That\u2019s when the mice came out.  Dozens of them scurrying<\/div>\n
here and there as we snuggled down in our sleeping bag hoping<\/div>\n
that no pregnant varmint had found the bag a good place to make<\/div>\n
a nest for little creatures.  <\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
We did not sleep. Nights in the north can get cold.  No stove in the<\/div>\n
cottage unless a Coleman cooking stove would do.  We got it going<\/div>\n
But would the Coleman<\/div>\n
consume all the oxygen and leave us to die?  We made it<\/div>\n
through the night OK.  The thought of a nice swim in the morning<\/div>\n
allowed us to put the negatives of cottage life aside.<\/div>\n

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Well.  We were wrong.  The lake was not a lake really. Swamp would<\/div>\n
be a better term…It looked like<\/div>\n
a lake and I suppose far out from shore it became a lake.  But we<\/div>\n
never reached the open water.  The water weeds were as thick as<\/div>\n
a tropical forest.  And on the weeds were little slippery things called<\/div>\n
leeches.  And other squishy things that moved as we trod our <\/div>\n
way out from shore.  Perfect hideout for snapping turtles we decided.<\/div>\n
What would happen if a bare foot appeared in front of a snapper’s mouth?<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
I got my camera\u2026waded out to Marjorie and got<\/div>\n
a good shot of the cottage we would never forget.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EPISODE 581   COTTAGE LIFE \u2026NOT ALWAYS GLORIOUS alan skeoch may 13, 2022 NORTH BAY: SUMMER 1965 \u201cWould you like to spend a couple of days at our cottage?\u201d \u201cSure.\u201d That invitation sounded great.  A couple of days all to ourselves at a Northern Ontario cottage.   Visions of gin and tonic served on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}