SeaChange: 6-17 to 9-9 Jack Lake

Our arrival at Jack Lake also marked the end of our all play and no work days. Cottages are by their very nature work and we had quite a bit of renovating to do. We had rented the cottage for most of the past 15 years and had spent little time or money updating the place. That was all about to change.

Last year we started replacing the windows in the cottage and that morphed into a wholesale remodel which took most of this summer. For the better part of two months we lived in a state of chaos. July and August were pretty cold and rainy though (despite the photos), so at least we weren’t missing out on sunny days and warm weather.

My first project was to address the issue of a beaver that was attacking our trees. There was a huge beaver building a mansion at the end of our bay who apparently considered our property to be his building and supply store. I wrapped wire mesh around the trunks of the types of trees he seemed to prefer that were near the water and woke the next morning to discover he had moved on to our other trees. This pattern continued for several days, but at last it seems I am victorious. I felt like Bill Murray with the gopher in Caddy Shack.

The big news for the year was that the cottage two doors down from us had been sold! This meant new neighbors and sent shock waves through our little row of cottages. Fred and Eva (the sellers) are a quiet couple in their 70’s. Fred had fallen ill over the winter and so Eva decided to sell. According to Rick and Laurie (next door to us, Rick is Fred and Eva’s nephew) and Vikki and Bruce (three doors down) there were two full price offers for the property before it even hit the market. The first offer was by a couple, but the second potential buyer in line was a couple who already had a cottage on this lake and would be purchasing this one for their 19 and 20 year old sons to use because the boys were destroying the parents cottage with drunken parties. If the first offer fell through the boys would be our neighbors. We were all in a panic. Vicious rumors about counter offers and inspection problems that might threaten the sale circulated furiously. We counted down the days to the closing.

In the mean time, the first social event of the season was a 70th birthday party for Bruce.

We are fortunate that Rick loves to fish but his family hates to eat fish. Every once in a while he drops by with dinner. In return, we take their kids tubing.

One day Dave went to the marina in the next bay and a woman made a u-turn in the road but got a bit too close to the edge and her car slid, leaving her rear tires suspended in mid air. Dave stopped to see if she was okay (she was) and apparently fended off some rather testosterone filled boys who wanted to yank her car back to the road with their oversized pick up trucks. The woman wanted to wait until her husband arrived. He did, and as Dave was leaving he described the location of our cottage and invited the couple to stop by for a drink some time. A few days later a boat came by, very close to shore, going back and forth looking at our cottage. I waved and they called out “Does Dave live here?” Maureen and Mario visited for a while, and when they left we exchanged phone numbers. They invited us to their cottage for dinner later in the week and we had a wonderful dinner with them and their big, Maltese family, a close knit and hilarious group. They even treated us to fireworks off the end of their dock after dinner!

In the middle of July we all breathed a sigh of relief when Doug and Julie, the new neighbors, started to move in. Never was a couple more welcome in a neighborhood than they were. No matter what they were like they had to be better than the boys would have been. And in fact, they have been a terrific addition. They are big fans of the bonfire, and evening gatherings at their place are becoming part of the rhythm of life around here. Pardon the limitations of my camera, you have to imagine the lake and starlit sky in the back ground.