The Rock House - a musing

A little musing from two summers ago. Every year, our family makes its yearly pilgrimage to our family cabin in the mountains. I have so many wonderful and endearing memories here, it is where we have marked the end of the year as it fades into autumn and it is where we have left our childhoods behind. This is about a dear little place that stands across the lake and a little to the left, high up on the cliffs and hidden by old trees, the rock house. 

~ Quiet. Utter and complete stillness. I had walked here many times before and every time, I had felt this stillness, this quiet, this emptiness. Often, when the crowded, stuffy, and merciless noise of the one-room cabin became too much for me, I made for this place, my own, special place. 

I would push and pull at the old and worn canopy of the little red canoe, its sides still warm from basking in the sun. I would self consciously run my hands along the rough, wizened flanks of the “whale” as we used to call it and wait breathlessly as its smooth sides flawlessly glided into the water. A huge scraping from the wood against the stones and then silence. .as it hit the water. It is hard to explain the feeling of being alone, in the middle of a lake, at almost dusk. The sky is clear and blue, endlessly blue, such colours that cannot be replicated by man’s feeble hand, and those clouds, voluminous balls of cotton candy floating on the sky’s eternal canvas. There is the stillness, the whole world waits breathlessly as if on the tip of its toes, waiting, listening to the gentle and almost imperceptible “swish” “swish of the little red canoe skiing along the rim of the water. Clear, blue, green, all at once, the water sprays cold and precise, rippling off as if fairies in a dance, bubbling, laughing as I stare at my warped reflection in the glass. I am so small here, in the middle of everything, and yet such bliss, such joy, such beauty, do I feel. 

Then, with the old and completely misshapen paddles, I would navigate my through the small inlets and fallen comrades that once stood and erect, until I would bump, rather unceremoniously into the rocks at my destination. Forest greets me, these old and wise trees having looked down for so many years, having seen so many things. The rocks are covered in scraggly moss, pine needles stick out like daggers from the clefts in the rock, and ahead, a mountain of stone to ascend. Above, she stands alone as she has for so long now. Broken and yet proud, a reminder of the past, of people long gone, and of memories long since forgotten. After a rather rough climb and the fear of falling behind into the chasm of jagged rocks and murky black water, I reach the top. She overlooks all, sister it seems to be the statue of liberty, more moving, more emotion-filled, more remote, and more. . . still. 

She must have been a beauty once, surrounded by flag stoned- pathways and retaining walls, rickety and long since fruitful orchards, and the remains of a dusty well, its life-giving force now dry, dead, and broken. There she is, the little rock house.