I did not plagiarize from the play or the movie “On Golden Pond” because there is no such thing as a Golden Pond in New Hampshire. The movie was primarily filmed at various locations on Squam Lake (which does exist), located about an hour and a half north of where this story took place. If you have been following along with my recent entries, what follows should start to connect a few dots, and maybe, just maybe, you will start to understand- by the time you’re done reading this one- what any of this has to do with where I’m heading next with my storytelling over the period between the hibernal equinox and the first day of spring, a little over 90 days later.
When my first wife and I separated, I landed at my brother’s front door. It would take a few days, but he knew of just the right place for me to stay longer term so I could have some time to myself to sort things out and get my shit together. He told me about a place a very close friend of his own that was right on a little pond that just happened to be available for rent and might be exactly what the doctor ordered. I knew his friend pretty well; they had been very close for a great many years, and I was well aware of his “eccentricities,” so I was all in.
I think I have pretty well established that I am a country boy at heart, but having grown up in a neighborhood where the houses were so close together, you pretty much knew everything that goes on in every other house within sight. And even during the years after I grew up and moved out, with a couple of brief exceptions, almost everywhere I lived was similar to this so-called “close-knit community” thing that everybody likes to rave about. All the years that have transpired since I lived in that cabin, looking back at the things I learned there, I can say with confidence that everything I’ve learned – about the world around me and my microscopic place in it since – pales in comparison to what I learned on Winkley pond.
You make a right turn about a half mile before the pond and then a quick left a couple hundred yards in before making your Final approach to the cabin. Slowly rolling up the gravel road, passing the main house, another couple hundred yards in front of you is what looks like two buildings attached to each other straight in front of you. The road continues beyond the cabin a pretty good distance, Meandering its way toward other properties with Waterfront access to the pond, but as you get out of your car and step onto the porch, you can neither see the main house you have just passed by nor can you see any of the other properties beyond the cabin because the surrounding trees and natural landscapes completely obscure you from their view.
It is a three-step climb to the cabin’s front door. If you turn completely around and put the door to your back, what stretches out in front of you is Winkley Pond. It’s not a terribly large pond, under 20 acres by some measures, but it is considered part of a larger Conservation Area that includes a couple of other bodies of water and quite a bit of protected Forest land. Directly to your left is a slight ramp about 10 ft long that leads to a door with the universally known quarter moon carved into it, which serves as the biological waste recycling facility. More on that shortly.
If you look out from the porch and down to the left, you will see a very healthy and well-established stand of reeds that provide perfect cover for guppies, tadpoles, and newborn fish. They are also a great place for red-winged blackbirds and other sorts of birds to hang out, along with the occasional white or blue heron, to survey hunting opportunities. A fairly short walk straight ahead, and downhill a little bit, is the water’s edge and what is effectively the beach from which you can look farther to your right and see that it continues maybe a hundred yards before you see trees again to the right of which is another cabin off in the distance.
There are several more beyond that one, more stands of trees not far away from the shoreline, and looking straight ahead to the other side of the water, there is a 50 mph Road from which you made the original turn to get into the wooded area where the cabin sits. It is stunning in its subtle and natural magnificence despite not being very big, and the first thing that hit me when I got there that first day was just how quiet it was… Even as I saw cars racing from left to right or right to left, I could not hear them from my vantage point while standing on that porch. It was breathtaking.
Spinning the rest of the way around and stepping through the front door of the cabin, you are immediately struck by the feeling that you have gone back in time; the interior walls are made of tongue-and-groove pine, knots and all, and you get the feeling that the room is wrapping its arms around you and giving you a big “welcome home “hug. The living space is broken up into two separate areas, each of which is 12 ft wide by 6 ft deep.
Stepping 6 feet forward takes you to two steps you walk up that bring you into the kitchen. The right half of the room has a gas heater and a set of homemade bunk beds to the far right. To the left is the kitchen area with one window, a double sink, a homemade countertop, homemade cabinets, a gas stove, and a refrigerator. As if placed there intentionally, what catches your eye as you take this all in is a red and white checked picnic tablecloth, which serves as a curtain used to cover what a normal person would consider the plumbing underneath the sink. Hermits and cabin dwellers are not normal people, so when I opened that curtain, I immediately broke into hysterical, tear-filled laughter as I discovered there was a 5-gallon mud bucket behind that vinyl tablecloth.
On the far right side of the counter, there is a little shelf on legs strong enough to hold two 2 1/2 gallon water jugs, the spigots of which can be connected to the faucet so you can pretend you have running water for things like washing dishes and the ever-popular sink bath should such an enterprise tickle your fancy. And while I took plenty of advantage of this particular feature, I only did so when Winkley began drawing a blanket of ice over itself to turn down the lights a bit so life beneath the surface could take a much-deserved respite from all the chaos of warmer water life. Before that time, all of my baths were taken neck-deep in my 20-acre bathtub. But before we get to that, let’s talk about the 900 lb gorilla in the room… The Outhouse, or Privy if you happen to have grown up 3,500 miles east of my pond.
Various forms of outhouses have been around for centuries, as far back as the 1500s by some accounts, and as our species has evolved, so, too, has our way of contending with the unavoidable problem of disposing of the natural digestive byproducts of consuming food and water. The civilized elements of our society, spoiled by the luxuries of such things as running water, flush toilets, and bidets, are probably unaware that a coffee scoop of lye sprinkled over said byproduct renders it to dust in 24 to 48 hours. Performing such an act might be discomfiting to higher elements of society, but to the cabin-dwelling Hermit, it’s just another day in the life. In the case of my time at Winkley, there was actually quite a bit of luxury to the whole experience.
The first time my kids came for visitation, they were having none of that outhouse; “icky,” “gross,” and “I’m not doing that” were said extensively during the ride from their house to the cabin, and I promised them they could hit the McDonald’s bathroom a mile up the road before we got to Winkley. Once we got to the cabin, skimming rocks on the water, fighting over who got the top bunk, and the oldest making the trip up the ramp to check out the “facilities”, and the next thing you know, they are arguing over who’s turn it was to use the “bathroom.”
My brother’s friend had run a wire from a switch right inside the front door that connected to a light socket inside the outhouse. In warm weather, a standard 60 W soft white light bulb was used, but in colder weather, it held a heat lamp bulb, of the sort you get in bathrooms of hotels for use after a shower or bath, and it provided not only Heat but just a bit of ambiance to go along with flipping through the pages of old reader’s digests. You know? It’s funny how kids can figure out a way to turn”icky” into quality “me”time, but what do I know? Simple pleasures are in the eye of the beholder.
Speaking of simple pleasures, sitting on the transition between water and sand, naked as the day I was born and freshly bathed with a bar of Ivory soap and the waters of Winkley, I routinely watched the sunset in front of me, surrounded by the deafening silence of the smooth water and quieting wildlife until the sun had fallen the rest of the way below the horizon behind the trees on the other side of that road. The first time I did this, I felt a little uneasy; so accustomed our species has become to the trappings of clothing and modesty, I laughed nervously at myself about the very idea that I was naked anywhere outside the confines of four walls and drawn curtains.
When the next bath time came, I spent the sunset thinking about the first of my kind, who knew nothing other than nudity (and the joyful sensation of submerging themselves in water), and just how equally they must have found such beauty and wonder in that big round orange and yellow orb in the sky as it fell from sight. It occurred to me at that moment that, sitting at the edge of this body of water surrounded by a stand of reeds next to me on one side and trees on the other… 20 acres of water in front and all around me… I am the intruder, and Nature moved over and made room for me rather than the other way around. As well, Nature came before me, and she will remain long after I am gone. And that it is me who should be humbled by her permission to allow me a seat at the table and show gratitude by taking the best care of her, I can as my way of showing my appreciation for all the things I would not otherwise have if it were not for her presence.
I have never forgotten the things I learned from Nature during that period of my life when she allowed me a front-row desk in her classroom. She taught me that, like her, we are microscopically small compared to what exists beyond our comprehension. She taught me that each of the systems of life relies on the others to survive and that abusing any one system could very well severely harm or kill one or more of the others.
She also reminded me, perhaps most importantly, that you only get out of what you learn in theory that which you put back into the work of sustaining and improving it. Worthy of note is the observation that this applies equally to both human interactions as well as the relationship between humans and the natural systems we rely on from Nature in order to continue the existence of both.
