Missing Muskoka

The Muskoka Sands Inn. From 1980 to 1983, when I was 7 to 10 years old, my parents and I vacationed there every summer for two weeks. Because I was a kid, soaking up every second of sensory input and weaving hours of detailed memory-fantasies, in my mind it's like we lived there for months on end. Beautiful months upon summer months.

Muskoka is a rural region around 2 hours' drive north of Toronto. It's cottage country, a mosaic of lakes, rivers, and forests. You know you've arrived when the highway starts cutting through outcroppings of granite. Speckled, rough walls of veined pinkish or rusty rock loom over the car on both sides as you fly from the city towards your vacation. It's the Canadian Shield making its presence known.

The Muskoka Sands Inn still exists, but it's been totally renovated. I was only back there once since they rebuilt the place, and I didn't like the new look. I preferred the quaint, 1960's guest cottages that used to surround the main building. My folks and I used to stay in the same one every year: The Elm. My room had an orange shag rug, wood-panelled walls, and a brown-and-vanilla floral patterned quilt on the bed. The tap water from the bathroom sink came out smelling like the lake.

Lake Muskoka was the centrepiece of the resort. Most of the people vacationing there windsurfed, water-skied, and para-sailed all day long, stopping only for beers, burgers, and fries on the patio restaurant over the boathouse. On Sundays a live band played jazz on the patio, and I was allowed to order a banana split after lunch. I had to eat it quickly before it melted in the hot, August sun. Then if I was lucky my parents would give me quarters for a few games of pinball inside the restaurant.

Once every two weeks, the servers from the Inn put on a water skiing demonstration. They did tricks on inner tubes, made human pyramids, and, as a gimmick, skied on their serving trays.

The formal dining room, where breakfast and dinner were served, also overlooked the lake. It was a big, wide room, surrounded on three sides by glass windows. The sunset views were phenomenal. There was a parquet dance floor in the centre, and on Saturday nights the same jazz band that played at the boathouse would play big band music in the dining room while all the grownups danced.

My favourite moment in that dining room occurred when a server was bringing a huge tray from the kitchen to restock the breakfast buffet. It was filled with little glass cups full of stewed prunes. The server lost his footing as he stepped onto the dance floor, and lobbed the entire tray up into the air as he flailed for balance. It rained stewed prunes that morning.

My favourite place to be was in a special little cottage shaded by ancient trees, next to the shuffle-board courts. This was the potter's cottage. The owner of the inn was married to a sweet Dutch woman who had set up her clay studio there. She made beautiful dishes, mugs, and vases which she sold in the front room of the cottage. She used to let me stand quietly in a corner of the studio, watching her throw pots on the wheel. It was like magic, seeing a slippery, grey lump of clay turn into a bowl right before my eyes.

Once she let me make some bowls and stamp them with my initials. My mother still has them. It was only years later, when I took a pottery course and sucked at it, that I realized how much help I must have had making those neat, symmetrical bowls. She must have pretty much made them for me and then let me take all the credit.

On busy, cold days, I miss the Muskoka Sands Inn. I miss wading knee-deep in the cold lake, letting the minnows kiss my ankles. I miss taking walks with my mother, holding our breath while walking through clouds of gnats. She always ended up with at least one bug in her mouth, no matter how hard she tried to keep them out. I miss falling asleep in my squeaky twin bed, listening to the maple trees rustle in the wind outside the cabin window.