The ice is only just out in the 30,000 islands of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay, the world’s largest fresh-water archipelago. The channel markers aren’t up yet, so the boat trip that ends two days’ travel to the family island takes longer than usual. Here we join a dozen or so of my wife’s far-flung relatives for three days of opening camp.Work consists of a list carefully refined over the winter; and another list that emerges when we see what winter did. One cabin sags disturbingly. There’s the water system to see to, generators to revive, cabins to re-stain - and we must renew our battle with pine needles.
Needles of the Eastern White Pine float down gracefully and latch tightly to the slightest object – nailheads, a dock splinter, even bits of lichen or moss. They form enormous drifts that mat, retain moisture, and slowly rot whatever lies beneath. After days spent shoveling them off roofs, flushing them out of downspouts, and sweeping them from docks, I’ve decided that they’re nature’s cunning effort to destroy man and all his works. And they must go or we’d be rebuilding every year. Hence the cry to the unskilled: sweep or stain!
Most do both to relieve the boredom. From looking down at defiant pine needles, I look up to stain a wall.
Those with talent work on the sagging cabin, which sits over a boggy spot that’s finally rotted the foundation. So we jack it up and crawl underneath to frame new supports. Hot work in a tight space – made more exciting when someone notes this is a denning area for Ontario’s Eastern Massassagua rattlesnake. But they’re shy, retiring creatures and we share the resource without difficulty.
Working on the place you learn to deal with pine needles and live with snakes, and you develop a true sense of ownership - I helped stain that cabin; we re-set that dock anchor. Such shared experience has kept the family together and the island camp functioning for five generations. As we raise the flag indicating camp is open, across the water we see Canadian and American families on other islands doing the same thing.
The flags are up; the islands are ready.
Let summer begin.
