We don't do winter anymore.

(Winter at Rebel’s Isle. Many years ago) The winter night falls fast in January. A thin smear of light fades in the west and blackness rises to snuff it out at the top of the trees. We’re keeners, we’re at the cottage camping out. We’ve dined, and the dishes are freezing in the sink; tomorrow, when it’s light enough, we’ll wash them. Outside, horizontal snow shrieks past the window and the great pines wave like reeds. You’d think they’d snap. Frozen walls shudder and creak as the wind-blasts whistle through the old cracked boards. Window glass rattles. The cold presses the cabin walls from all sides closing in on the little ball of heat from the rusty old wood-burning stove, squeezing it down to a tiny circle of warmth. Frosty drafts tickle our necks right through the wool turtleneck sweaters.

There’s nothing else to do so we sit silently reading, our rockers drawn as close to the stove as we can get without melting our goose-down slippers. CBC North is droning on, something in French, and we’re listening only to feel less alone. It is time to stoke the stove again and the wood box is getting low. I’ll have to go out to the woodpile sometime before dawn, might as well be now. The wind screams and claws at the open door and the shocking cold air sucks my lungs dry; it actually hurts inside my chest. Pull the turtleneck over my nose to breathe through and pre-warm the air so it’s safe to take into the body. The woodpile is thirty feet from the cabin but I can barely make it out in the blackness. Kick a few ragged chunks loose from the snow and load the canvas carrier, and boots slipping, stagger back to the wood box. Three trips and I can’t feel my fingers anymore so I’d better get back in. Hang my stiffened coat on the hook. Red embers peek through the little windows in the stove door and the cold’s been driven back to the walls. My ears and fingers sting as the capillaries open up again. Annie has made a pot of tea. Frozen sheets beckon. We’ll sleep with our touques pulled tight over our ears and we’ll wear thick socks on our feet. This proves that cottagers are not normal people. We don’t go up in the winter anymore – beautiful though it can be. Early on, as keener cottagers, we’d rig everything for winter at closing up time and wait in the city for the ice reports. Sometime in January when the ice was thick enough to support a pickup truck we’d brave the trip across on foot packed up like campers. Camping’s what it was; winter camping in a big wooden tent with an electric stove. No running water, but that’s no hardship. Melt snow for washing, carry a jug for drinking, and the outhouse seat is one of those thermal jobs that warms up in seconds. It was worth the extra trouble. Winter light has a sparkle to it like precious crystal fallen from the sky and sprinkled all around. We’d arrive and the first order would be to get a fire going. Everything up here in winter revolves around having a fire. Then while the stove clanked and groaned and began to breathe heat into the room we’d busy ourselves, keeping moving, setting up, hauling wood, heating water. And the cabin would slowly, slowly warm and, layer by layer, the clothes would come off. On a windless winter day we’d be opening a window to spill a little heat. We’d walk out on the lake and explore the silent wild. Walking, where only a boat could go before. Note with outrage where the snowmobilers had crossed our island. We tried cross-country skiing one time. Annie did fine but my ankles were already a problem and I couldn’t control the skis. It was my day to provide the comic relief. I’d get going okay then gradually lose it to one side or the other and go down with a puff in the snow. Never did get it right. We stopped coming up in winter after one especially cold night by the stove but it wasn’t the cold that drove us home. We’d had a minor scare driving a jeep across the ice. All seemed fine, but suddenly the sound of crackling ice spider-webbing out from beneath the wheels gave my heart that top of the roller coaster feeling. It was just an area of surface melt that had not quite frozen all the way back to solid with two feet of good ice beneath it, but for a brief thrilling moment I was in full reptilian response mode. From experience I knew to keep an even throttle, do nothing sudden and keep moving forward. I felt the jeep settling beneath me and thought of the twenty feet of water on the other side of the ice. Then the wheels touched bottom and the tires grabbed hold and I was out of the soft spot. Later I walked out to see a pair of ten-inch deep watery ruts in the centre of a great web of cracks spiralling outward. It was enough to give you chills. It seemed that winter was no longer our friend, but a creature lurking, waiting for us to let down our guard. And there was that beautiful sunny day in March when we sat on the warm dock listening to the snow-melt trickling like a brook. My lazy gaze rested on the growing gap of open water at the shore. Holy crap! We packed. Right away. And we stepped gingerly, as if walking carefully would make us lighter on the ice. We kept well apart and away from the mushy looking areas. Knowing the depth below kept my pulse up. As if anything more than over our heads would make a difference, but that’s how you think when the adrenalin’s running. Once safely ashore we dragged our stuff to the car. The air was warm and alive with early Spring. The snow glittered as it melted and the ice turned from a solid to a liquid beneath our feet. We’d stayed too long, and without ever saying so, we both knew we’d never be here in winter again. That’s fine with me, the memories are all I need these days. But I get this wistful feeling sometimes about knowing I’ve played my last baseball game; hiked my last wilderness portage; skied my last run, and camped my last winter weekend at Rebel’s Isle.