Annals of Travel: Canada, Mornings at the Cottage, 2016
With luck I awaken at 6 or 6:30 and grab the cameras and go out to see what I can see. I have a very exploitative relationship with the environment: how’s the light? How are the reflections? Is there any color in the water? I check it out near the cottage, then walk to the end of the island. The grasses and reeds at this time of year are still just a little beyond stubble – not the luxuriant arcs of reeds that look so stupendous in my August pictures. The light is lovely but the colors are not as intense in the evening as they have been in my August pictures. One morning early I definitely got up early and got lots of misty pictures, but still not as intense as in late August and early September.
After satisfying myself that I have exploited the scenery as much as I can or feel like, I go into the cottage and make a big cup of coffee and hot milk. It’s safe and pleasant to sit on the deck and listen to the birds, but going to the end of the island is even better. The striped and striated rocks in multiple grays and pinks, the patches of dark and light lichen and some green, the wildflowers, the light breezes, the distant or close geese swimming and honking, the lightly rippling water –and I sit on a chair-sized rock, kindly deposited there just for me by millions of years of glaciation by the Canadian Shield, and sip coffee and enjoy the breeze and the sounds of geese and clacking crickets. Or I kick away the cylinders of white goose poop that have been fertilizing the rock for many a moon, and lie for a while directly on a flattish stretch of the pink and gray rock. The New Age people say it is grounding. Maybe so. Anyway you lie there supported by the rock, the sun dusting your face with particles of sunlight, the sounds of the creatures and the gentle wind caressing you …. and for a few brief moments you forget about Trump.
After a while, it is back to the cottage to stretch and do Salute to the Sun on the Northeast-facing deck. Nice that I have a yoga mat here, and a few make-do cushions. The Muskoka chairs have gently rounded seat edges perfect for a gentle backbend over them from a position seated in virasana, and, when you’re finished, nice for lying on your back with your calves resting on them. It’s still fresh in the morning, before nine o’clock.