A week at Lake Rosseau
since I can't stop reminiscing this summer trip
I’ve always had difficulty remembering things. Years of being corrected has led me to accept that my memory is more fragmented and hazy than most. When connecting with others, I’ll remember what excites, saddens, or is important to them, even if I forget their name and job title. Maybe that’s why, in my undergraduate psychology classes, my favourite lesson was about how the filing cabinet in our mind stores information that makes us who we are.
Much of what we remember, as years go by, is false. Like a game of broken telephone, we recall the gist of events with changed details, creating a story that makes sense to us. A form of “honest lying,” done simply because our brains aren’t wired to remember every detail. Some people confabulate due to diseases such as Alzheimer dementia or traumatic brain injury too. Overtime, memories also fade in quality. They become less vibrant, like posting a photo on Instagram and decreasing the brightness or saturation of the image.
To boost memory recall, two strategies involve describing events to cement it in your memory and giving yourself time and space to recharge your mind.
I’m not a scientist, just a girl who longs to cement a week into her memory.
It was a week at Lake Rosseau with my good friend, H, and her family, the best start to July. Seeing each other day and night for five days straight gave us plenty of time to explore a pocket of Muskoka and create memories worth remembering. (I refrain from using the word “unforgettable” since we now know that memories are forgettable, whether we want them to be or not). Our friendship was fresh and young but had essence of people who have known each other for years.
I found an old Sony NEX-6 in my closet the day before the trip. It became a fun way for me to document my first summer vacation with a friend I met a year ago.
I channelled my inner girl scout and packed a camera, binoculars, journal, guitar, and about two-weeks worth of clothes, ready for a summer getaway in my own province. Cars wore upside-down canoes, strapped with boxes of camping gear on the way up north. I sped along the straight highway and managed to cut my arrival time down by ten minutes, thinking the whole way that I was about to spend a week with a family I barely knew. Believing in the general notion that we’re all people who share more similarities than differences, I wasn’t worried and knew I’d make myself at home fairly quick.
When I arrived, H ran toward me wearing crocs, comfy shorts and a Julia Roberts smile. We squealed and hugged and jumped loud enough to scare off any chipmucks that H hoped to befriend, which she said was her goal once our ‘hellos’ were done.
Later, I rested in my minimal and cozy bedroom overlooking the lake while the family played Pickleball. After dinner, H and I paddle-boarded into the sunset. Canada Day fireworks exploded in the horizon.
It was hard for me to sleep deeply on the first night, so the next day, I enjoyed a quiet and early morning doing pilates on the dock. Morning mist hovered over the deep emerald lake and ducklings swam silently by. I listened to water trickling and a choir of rustling trees, focusing on my breath and slowing down thoughts of what to do later in the day. I was entering a new month of summer, a summer where I intended to write every week, but that morning, I allowed myself to let go of my expectations to write.
While in a stretch, a pack of raccoons snuck up behind me. I stood up, careful not to make any sudden movements, until they scurried away.
Later, H and I became summer tourists exploring the town of Rosseau.
An old carriage sat on display outside the famous Rosseau General Store, a building that has been standing since the late 19th century, located a walkable distance from the Rosseau Waterfront Park where the Farmer’s Market takes place each summer.
At the back of the General Store, a butcher with kind eyes conversed easily with returning customers looking to buy meat. Candles and gardening supplies and general items filled the shelves. A bag of chips or tub of ice cream was double the price than at bigger grocery stories, so we left, promising to return one day with more pennies in our pocket.
We also visited Rosseau Lake Antiques, a boutique called Teeny Weeny Bikini co., and a book store called Second Story Books where I became immersed in an excerpt that brought me a lot of comfort and awe. It was about subconscious writing from “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser:
“Your subconscious mind does more writing than you think. Often you’ll spend a whole day trying to fight your way out of some verbal thicket in which you seem to be tangled beyond salvation. Frequently a solution will occur to you the next morning when you plunge back in. While you slept, your writer’s mind didn’t. A writer is always working. Stay alert to the currents around you. Much of what you see and hear will come back, having percolated for days or months or even years through your subconscious mind, just when your conscious mind, laboring to write, needs it.”
Corner House Books was closed that day. Local contractors that crossed the lawn while we peeked through the window told us that the owners only opened the store when they felt like it. When I asked if they could guess a specific day, they shrugged their shoulders and carried on with their work.
The store was open on my last day in town. On the porch, I perused through recommendations from the store owner, trying to decide which book would be my next souvenir. I chose a book by Canadian, Nobel-prize winning author, Alice Munro, before I learned about the grim news in her daughter’s recently published essay.
H saw stars for the first time on this trip. We stood in awe under a dark celestial canvas, speechless, except for H’s excited whispers of this is amazing. I can’t believe I’m seeing stars! I’d seen stars at home on winter midnights skating on our pond but nothing bright like this. If we were sailors looking for direction, the constellations were navigating us to a life filled with more awe.
We went to bed in appreciation for the universe that, H noted, had always been there. We just couldn’t see it as clearly from where we usually stood.
On another cloudless night, H said something that I loved: she quoted that the best relationships desire another’s fullness. Someone who sees you and loves even the parts you hide and find difficult to appreciate. I turned to her, again in awe of her spontaneous depth, until the moment passed and we were cackling again at hypothetical situations best expressed on a dock when everyone was was asleep.
On my last day in Muskoka, I found a painting of the street corner by Crossroads Resturant where H and I splurged on a fancy meal the night before, a meal we finished in half an hour, less time than it took to get ready, because we were famished and out of conversation topics after a day out in the sun.
The painting was by a local artist named Jessica Vergeer who greeted me at her booth at the Rosseau Farmer’s Market. Vergeer paints locally-inspired landscapes and runs painting classes at the local library. Her painting inspired me to appreciate new corners in my own hometown.
Meeting H felt so inconsequential, but then I blinked and suddenly we were two pals who shared countless inside jokes and separate but similar hopes for our future that, although far, didn’t seem too impossible anymore.
We overcame a million mini fears on this trip, such as kayaking and paddle-boarding in “treacherous waters,” and filled our days with a million “firsts” that made the summer feel like a new beginning was near. Beginning of what? I don’t know. Surely we would return to our routines carrying a bit of Muskoka in us.
I’ll always long for simpler days by the lake: waves rolling against the dock, sand stuck on skin, humid nights under the stars, prayers whispered in bed, mornings spent reading and singing our favourite songs, ducklings floating by.
The thought of memories becoming black and white the more time passes makes me sad. So I write to remember that the best moments are always about who I was with, even as my memory fades.
This was beautiful! It reminded me of someone reminiscing about a dream they had.