Dreaming of Summer

I’m sitting now watching the sun set after the first real summer thunderstorm of the year. My 5 year old son wondering what all the fuss is about and why the TV had been turned off.  It’s easy to jump on the media band wagon and say “we never had storms like this back in the day…” but from my memory we had many storms, just like this, when I was growing up.  It’s a sure sign of summer!

I’ve always been a fan of summer though the experiences today are very different than when I was a kid.

Summer living in the country meant saying good bye to school friends for a few months.  In the 70’s when school ended my parents would pack us up, and we would move 20 miles north to the Haliburton Forest & Wildlife Reserve, where my Dad worked and my Mom ran the camp store.

We pretty much camped for the summer!  Here we had 100 square miles of park land with 50 lakes as a back yard. My Mom’s store meant a great selection of popsicles and ice cream bars as needed.  I took it for granted that I could spend summer days with my Dad, zipping down remote bush roads in a ’62 Willy’s jeep, no roof, no doors, no seat belts, windshield laid flat on the hood. 4 wheel drive as needed!  No electricity, no cell phones, no civilization for miles and miles. Lunch stops often meant pulling out the fishing rods, and reeling in some small mouth bass.  Deer, rabbit, partridge, fox & bear sightings were the norm. 

The manager of the Reserve was a seasoned pilot and had an ancient 2 seater float plane.  I was always at the ready when “Pat” would stop by the camp store to see if I was interested in flying into Bivouac,  Powderhorn or any one of 40 other lakes to check on a reported fire or to bring an emergency message to some campers.  How that old plane managed to take off from some of those tiny lakes is still a cause for wonder. But those flights have stayed with me for my entire life. There is nothing like the moments as the engine quiets just before the pontoons hit the water as we would land on Little Redstone Lake and coast back into the dock. Mission accomplished.

There are many great memories of this time.  Television was a rarity, the 6 o’clock news was a possibility if the temperamental TV cooperated and the antenna mounted on the roof hadn’t changed direction in the wind. As the picture faded again and Dad slapped the side of the TV and cursed it for the 3^rd time…it would be shut off…and instead we talked, as a family, about the day.  

The 7 o’clock ritual was to shut the store as quickly as possible, pile into and onto the pickup truck and do the 1 mile trek to Macdonald Lake for the nightly swim. Mom and Dad would ride in the cab. The kids (anyone who wanted to come)  and dogs riding in the back, often sitting on the tail gate. Today that would likely land a parent in jail!   Yet somehow we all survived!

I can’t begin to count the number of campfires we sat around for those years of my youth. Nor could I begin to count the hotdogs, corn and marshmallows roasted.  My parents were, and are, very social people and were part of the camper’s community. We spent many evenings throughout the reserve at various campsites and fires sharing stories. I wonder sometimes if we are losing this story telling culture with the push of Tv’s and internet into cottage country.  

Of course as a kid it didn’t seem all that great all the time, sometimes the sense of isolation became overwhelming. I was fortunate to have other kids who lived on site as well. And we became phenomenal friends. We remain friends today.  But I did miss my school friends that I rarely saw during those months, and friendships with the campers and cottagers kids were fleeting, lasting only as long as their parents vacation time.  And yes I missed watching television…even if at home we only had the 3 Canadian Channels, CBC CTV and on a good day Global.  This was my life from the end of June to Labour Day, throughout my youth.

Fast forward to 2014 and city living, city job, more cellphones in the house than people, satellite television, Nintendo in the basement, Ipad at the ready…what does summer mean now?

First signs of summer are marked by the first bike ride and the opening of the pool. It won’t be long until we make the first visit to the splashpad near Lake Ontario, and a day at Burlington beach is in the near future.  My son will have his own memories of summer, but I hope to give him a small taste of some of those great experiences I had as a kid. The 62 Willy’s Jeep is gone, as is Pat and his float plane. But we will have some campfires this summer with family and friends.  The stories of times gone by will be shared, and hotdogs and marshmallows will be roasted.  We will catch some fish and there will be great swims in spectacular northern Ontario lakes.  TV’s and phones will be forgotten at least briefly.  Welcome back summer…and stay a while, we’ve missed ya!