I’ve come alone this holiday weekend to get our Adirondack cabin ready for another season. This is my favorite time here in many ways—despite the swarming black flies and the invisible-unti-they-are-biting-you noseeums—because of so many firsts: hot outdoor showers, swims, sails, fish caught, owls and loons and ravens heard.
I’ve been here several times already this spring, was here earlier than ever this year, the ice out earlier than ever, to view the total eclipse from mid lake and to start the process of upgrading my off-grid solar.
This time there was more solar-electrical work to do, and in short order, I had disconnected just about every wire in the place (all to add on one more piece of equipment—a second charge controller to better the communication between the 4 solar panels my neighbor gave me when he upgraded his setup, and the three lithium batteries that store the power).
In the past few days, I’ve replaced the outdoor sink faucet (which wasn’t drained well enough and burst this winter), changed the lower unit oil on our old, trusty Mercury outboard, hauled it down to the lake and, with the help of a neighbor, hoisted it onto the back of our old, Grumman aluminum boat.
I’ve set up the “boathouse”—a large, canvas tarp stretched over and zip-tied to a PVC frame, dragged my Sunfish sailboat down out of the pine needles and fallen branches and into the lake, scrubbed off layers of fluorescent yellow pine pollen mung, evicted numerous spiders from the footwell, yet again took too long to remember how to secure it well beneath the tarp with bungie cord…. I carried down its mast and daggerboard and tiller, lowered the lateen-rigged boom and sail down from where they wintered over in the rafters of the cabin, untangled lines, the boom only hitting the back of my head once as I worked the rigging into place.
Just as I foisted the sail up for the first time this year, standing thigh-deep in the cool lake water, a nice breeze came up, and I couldn’t resist hopping on, easing the daggerboard down as the wind took hold and pulled me out into deeper water. The day was resplendent, the new leaves just-full-sized, wisps of high clouds in an otherwise deep blue sky, the near and far mountains coming into view as I glided along silently toward the center of the lake.
Until the wind slowed, stopped and a swarm of black flies found me. At first, I was sailing just faster than them. I could see them gathering in a cloud astern, making chase, but as the wind slowed, they descended, delighted I was wearing shorts, sandals, a short-sleeved shirt, marooned, mid-lake. Their excitement was palpable as more and more of them dug in.
A few fortunate puffs were enough to bring me home, and I quickly lowered sail, secured the boat, and dove into the chill of the late May lake to escape the biting flies. I opened my eyes and swam to where I had seen a big smallmouth bass finning alertly above her spawning bed on my sail out. She dashed away as I approached. The pair of loons who had been patrolling the near shallows as I readied the boathouse and sailboat for the season emerged briefly, diving quickly again when they saw my head emerge just above the surface.
I looked back toward my cabin at the water front now summer ready, the freshly prepped outboard that had started on its first pull, the mast of my little sailboat bobbing from side to side from the waves of my first swim.
Soon I would sweep out the cabin, clean dishes, secure the shed, gather dirty linen, garbage, recycling…make the long drive back to Connecticut and another few weeks of teaching before finally returning, staying for more than just a few chore-filled days, another Adirondack summer begun.
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I love the Adirondacks. Thank you for sharing your cabin reopening journey. A lot of work but I am sure it is worth it.
How delightful to have that space. We have always had a longing for a casita, ever since we spent one winter in Spain amidst the small stone cabin-like summer houses of the Spanish. We’ve decided on a mobile casita, aka a campervan. Looking at one tomorrow!