Bluster

Cedar Cove faces due east toward Georgian Bay. At 7 AM this time of year, the edge of the red sun peaks over the horizon straight out from the house and paints the rocks and trees a bright orange. In minutes it has cleared the water and sailed upward and the day is ripe and ready for action.

No rise this morning though. Clouds have socked in the gray and a wind blusters in every direction. Temps hover where the precipitation doesn’t know whether to be snow or rain. Lumps of wet fly by the wide open glass across the front.

From my upper deck view, the water is in turmoil. Breakers whip in from the northeast and crash on the rocks out from shore throwing great sprays of white into the air. Inside the cove, the ripples go the other direction and criss-cross the incoming waves where they meet.

The near beach is simply piles of fistsize rocks piebald with snow patches left from a hard winter. The further beach is large boulders of every shape, size and color, and one could walk among them for half a mile with water up to only the knees. The rime that coated our near boulders the first night seems to have slipped into the water and melted.

The right wing of the cove swings around to the south, a ring of rocky beach covered with scrub, edged with cedar forest. To the north I see only open water and a very rough sea. No Lakers have passed for several days.

The cedar just outside my deck, taller than the peak, whips in the wind. The birdfeeder hangs and a crazy angle and swings. Last night a black and white woodpecker hung onto the suet cage and feasted all during our dinner. Huge wild turkeys hunkered down underneath the tree in oblivion to our table just a few feet away behind the glass. Squirrels and a bevy of rabbits come in regularly.

The deer seem the most curious. They slip out of the woods to the back, cross the north side of the beach, and move in under the tree out front – three, four, five. They are small and look like yearlings. One is particularly interested in what’s happening inside. He positions himself at the extreme left front and peers in the window. If the TV were on, I think he’d stay for the news.

The house that Bob built endures the weather without a whimper. Hunkered down on this bleak beach, it’s barely noticeable from down the way. The brown of the roof and cedar exterior blend into the woods. Only the sheer expanse of glass catches the light if there is sun. The warm knotty pine of the interior glows in the evening lights and catches the gleam of the Swedish woodstove. A unique combination of extreme comfort coupled with extreme wilderness. Only a man who loves the wild could find a barren patch of land like this and bring it to life.