Today, I am reporting from the field. Actually, it's a wee cottage on Sturgeon Point. Cozy Corner is its name, and it has certainly lived up to it for the umpteen years we have been coming to ‘the Point’. Our friends Jane and Dana, who also own the adjoining Cherry Tree Cottage (above), have been gracious hosts through all those years - letting us take part in a most fabulous tradition that, for Jane, has lasted her whole lifetime, and several generations before her.
For me, the Point is a place for much mirth, music, chatting, teasing and lake-lounging accompanied by sumptuous meals and vats of wine. It’s also where we catch up with dear friends and get some respite from the routine. There’s time for raucous games of euchre and for reading great books in companionable silence. And naps. Lotsa naps.
The lake itself is quite stunning - in the morning, with a coffee down at the dock, the cormorants, ospreys and seagulls flit past, along with the clumps of pleasure boats filled with vacationers that come up through the locks. In the evening, the sun takes its final bow with a display of pink and red and orange that tints every surface with a fiery brilliance.
This year, it’s a scorcher - the kind of summer days you remember as a kid when the garden hose came out launching screams of laughter. The sounds around the cottage are as comforting as the sights. They start with the birds tuning up the dawn, sizzle through the frying breakfast bacon, rumble with the speedboats on the lake, hit the high notes of children shrieking as they leap with abandon into the water, and finish with the call of the loon as night closes in.
Cherry Tree and Cozy Corner have been around for more than a century - since cottages began to dot the shores of lakes here in eastern Ontario. They are sturdy, old-fashioned buildings that - while they now have running water and electricity - retain the charm and simplicity of another time. Here, women in leg-of-mutton sleeves and long skirts danced with men in bow ties and straw boaters. These cottages have seen friends and family come and go, laugh and cry, fight and make up, and mostly love living in the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer at the Point.
And there are old black-and-white photographs and delicate watercolour paintings to prove the passing of time and the changing of generations.
So thanks, Jane and Dana. Thanks for sharing this most amazing piece of your life with us. And for giving us a gift we will treasure always.