Loughborough Lake

July 2, 2016 • Battersea, ON

Day three. I got up around 4:30 because the sun rises fairly early and it can get somewhat cold at night without heating in the cabin we’re staying in, even despite the warm daytime temperatures. Plus, I haven’t slept well the past two nights. Eventually I realized how tired I was and half-slept for a few more hours.

Afterwards, breakfast and a brief trip to town. We visited a few general stores and a bait shop to buy some minnows. The businesses around here seem to be fairly small and locally owned, unlike the larger chain stores in nearby Kingston. We came back, more or less lunched, and broke off to whatever and whichever activities, such as boating around and fishing, whenever convenient. I also kayaked to a couple of nearby islands, though I flipped the kayak several times while reëntering it from one of the islands, sustaining only minor cuts, one each on my knee and toe. I had been warned of cutting my feet on the rocks or the invasive Zebra mussels that attach to them.

Acquainting oneself with the nearby islands (map included above) seems like a must, and I’m slowly familiarizing myself with their names and which ones are which. The particular island we’re staying on is privately owned but originally purchased sometime in the early 1900s. As I’ve just learned today, many of the surrounding islands are actually property of the Crown, but I believe open to the public. This requires more research when I have internet access. (Update: here’s an interesting bit from Wikipedia. Go explore some.)

I also found an old cookbook from 1926, The Settlement Cook Book, which claims to be “The way to a man’s heart”. Thanks for reinforcing gender roles¹. Though actually it’s pretty interesting—there’s what’s effectively some cultural notes at the beginning, plus the general differences in the recipes. For example, “coconut” was spelt “cocoanut”, and the plural of “torte” was “torten” instead of “tortes”. Both of these help show the words' etymology—my guess is that coconuts were somehow mixed up with cocoa, and that the irregular plural of “torte” originates from German or Dutch, because -en is a common plural morpheme in those languages. Anyways, I did actually make one of the recipes in the cookbook, Cornflake Macaroons², which ended up slightly better than expected but were definitely not quite cookies.

Later, were invited to a fire at a nearby lakehouse on the shore, so we went after dinner. Instead of taking a boat to the marina and then taking a car to the house, it just makes more sense to cut straight through the lake and dock right there. Kinda cool, actually. This probably would have been more exciting if I knew anyone we were visiting, though as a plus I met the first Canadian I’ve heard using full Canadian raising³ and the stereotypical “eh?"⁴. As it got late, both parties (us and them) left for our island via boat, driving through the darkness and blaring music. Some stars were visible but others were obscured by the clouds, The occasional lightning lit up the sky though we couldn’t determine its source, and briefly, it drizzled lightly. I was almost completely exhausted from attempting to wane my boredom by continually analyzing my environment, plus the lack of quality sleep. Theoretically this is something I should’ve enjoyed, or at least I feel like I could’ve enjoyed under the right circumstances. This is the sort of optimistic spin I try to put on things—at the very least, new experiences are new experiences. Anyways, we returned to the island and the visitors (that is, the visitors that aren’t staying on the island—after all, I’m a visitor too) left shortly.

And then I spent a bit too much time finishing this post. I wasn’t expecting to get back this late.

Goodnight, goodnight.