Conversation with Erin Wilson
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 5:11PM Photography, science and collecting books are not alone among my many obsessions. One of the subjects that has absorbed much time and thought has been childhood. It is a fixation.
Usually when I hold long conversations with close friends, it is a theme not left untreated. So in one of my late-night talks with Erin Wilson, I finally asked her to write a story about her childhood. She very kindly accepted, which I appreciate, and reinforces my theory that childhood is the only stage of our life where we create wealth within us, from which we draw for the rest of our existence.
"When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly 's done, When the battle 's lost and won."
(Macbeth, by William Shakespeare)
"When Walls Speak"
by Erin Wilson.
It was already weathered when my grandfather saw it for the first time, a one-room hunting cabin sited on a small point of land marked by an evergreen that rose high above the canopy. When Clarence set out in his small boat from the government dock on MacLean Lake, he didn't need to see the 'for sale' sign to find the cabin. He didn't need the tall fir for navigation. When Clarence made his first visit to the property in the early 1940's; it was the only structure on the lake.
That simple cabin, perched so close to the water you could practically fish from the front porch, called to him. The lake and trees called to him. The giant outcroppings of Canadian Shield called to him. And I have no doubt the silence of the place called out loudest.
The cabin Clarence bought was quintessentially Canadian, built from materials on site or nearby. He continued in that same way when he added two small rooms to the original structure, and an outhouse around back. A kitchen was built to the east, and a bedroom to the west, their log walls made from trees felled on a small slice of land that stretched between the grassy lake shore and the top of the hill at the far edge of the property. You couldn't look at the structure without seeing Clarence's work calling out. Trained as an electrician and not a carpenter, he put up walls with the logs arranged vertically, fastened to sills with spikes, to avoid having to carefully fashion the traditional notched corners.
But what he might have lacked in carving skills, he made up for with the ability to make cozy spaces. The bedroom was a model for efficient sleeping, with just enough space for two built-in log bunk beds, and two trunks laden with woollen quilts and mothballs. My favourite childhood memories were made in my upper bunk; it was the most magical space in the world. In the early mornings, tucked under heavy covers, I woke to the sound of loons calling across the lake. On rainy days I would snuggle into old down pillows piled high and read books, as I listened to the rain's staccato on the roof just a few feet from my head. At bedtime the heavy bass of bullfrogs that lulled me to sleep. And if I awoke at night, the utter darkness was not something to be feared. I could always hear the soft sleepy breathing from the rest of my family tucked up in their own bunks nearby. For a girl wired to be solitary, it was a delicious sort of comfort.
Every part of the cabin called out in some way. The mica-rich fireplace stones were gathered a few at a time in an aluminum rowboat, by my grandmother and mother (who was four or five at the time). The kitchen door frame served as an important family touchstone, each child's height marked annually, and every big catch proudly recorded (July 9, 1958. Caught 15 1/2” Large Mouth Bass. Clarence Riegle) Clarence died before I was born, and yet his presence in that place was so tangible, I almost felt that I knew him.
The cabin's past called to us in such a sweet way that we failed to hear what it continued to say. By the time I was an adult, the cabin was in rough shape. Carpenter ants had hollowed out one of the original walls and we were facing complicated repairs. More devastating though, was the way the lake had changed. Sixty years after my grandfather first visited, the lake was now rimmed with grand homes, complete with satellite dishes. Summers were filled with the sound of jet skis from morning till night. I arranged my visits in the fall, on weekdays, to make sure there were few others on the lake. I craved that silence.
We couldn't make the decision to let go of the cabin, but in the end, the decision was made for us. One of the tall pines, propelled by a freak summer tornado, bisected the bedroom, and damaged the structure beyond repair. The fractured walls spoke one last time, and we finally listened. It was time to let go.
But still today, on nights when the staccato of rain beats on my roof, I am transported back to that little cabin on MacLean Lake. I can smell the mothballs and pine sap. And I'm grateful.
© Text and Images by Erin Wilson, all rights reserved.
About Erin Wilson
listener + learner. student + teacher. artist + cheerleader.
photographer + collector. exhibit designer + story junkie.
canadian + adventurous citizen of the world.
canada, childhood, wilsonian in conversation
Reader Comments (3)
a rustic cabin on the lake
what a wondrous childhood memory making place
Please don't make us wait long to read your own story, Jose :)
I have lost most of my childhood memories, but I can try to create something like it soon, Erin. But what I like of yours is the nice combination between the excellent description of the building and the memories of your roots inside and around that place.