MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Summer 2020

63 words :: Colin Field // photos :: Colin Field & Glen Harris If you’re ever stuck on a deserted island and can only choose one item to have with you, I’d suggest this cottage. Situated on one of the Fishing Islands in Lake Huron, it is a little slice of heaven where “getting away from it all” is just another ingredient of its charm. While cottages of today are often glamorous behemoths that for many would be an upgrade from their daily home, this is what a Canadian cottage should be: a slightly upgraded version of camping. This place ticks all the boxes—you’re never quite inside, but you’re not quite outside either. Camping with wooden walls as it were. Built in the early ‘30s, the 700-square-foot building is made of cedar two-by-fours from an older generation (they’re actually two inches by four inches) in a simple but functional style. The family who built and owned it lived in Ohio and would come up every summer to use it as a fishing camp and a place to reconnect. There are five outbuildings including a boat house, a bath house, a sleeping cabin, a wood shed and an art studio. Every nook is packed with memorabilia accumulated over generations: fishing lures, books, paddles. Everything has been thought out and perfected through decades of experience. The new owners bought it from the original family five years ago. “I’ve been coming to the lake since I was a kid,” says the owner. “I was visiting my mom in the area and the ‘For Sale’ sign went up that afternoon. There were multiple offers, but after a lengthy phone interview they agreed to sell to us. The owner Tommie asked me things like, ‘If I were to ask your daughters about the migration patterns of a monarch, would they be interested?’” His young daughters would be. And so Tommie from Ohio agreed to sell it to the new owners. And they’ve chatted almost every year since. “Every year she tells me she has a water jug that should be at the cottage. She keeps telling me she’ll return it one day. It really was a special place for their family.” The cottage came as is, with more than 80 years of acquired gear: water skis, cast-iron pans, a wooden boat, Hudson Bay blankets, lanterns, tools and more. The new owners used a wooden boat named An old fish camp is reborn as a family nature hideaway MOUNTAIN HOME