Morning at the Lake

A couple of weeks ago was our sleep-over at our new cottage on the lake.  We waited a few weeks until we had beds purchased and delivered so our first night would be able to comfortable.  When I headed to bed that first night, I noticed the bedroom here is much darker than our master bedroom at home.  There are no streetlights here, only the moon and stars.  Here, at the lake, neighbors are not leaving halogen front porch lamps lit through the night, awaiting the return of a teenager from a night out with friends.  There is no traffic along this private dirt road.  There is only the lake, the dark shadows of the cottages surrounding it, and the moon and stars above it.  This little corner of the world seems to know how to rest quietly in the night.

At about two o’clock in the morning, I woke up and decided to make a trip to the bathroom.  I call it a trip because, at the cottage, the bedrooms are upstairs, and the only working bathroom is downstairs, through the main room, and then through the kitchen.  So I rolled out of bed to begin my journey, taking a moment to steady myself and to get accustomed to the strange, new surroundings before moving too quickly. The experience of this darkness and quiet was at first disorienting while also refreshing.  Neither feeling overwhelmed me. They wove together into a calmness that settled on me like a flannel shirt on a cool fall evening; warm, weighty but comforting.  

After a moment or two of acclimating in the darkness, I reached over to the nightstand and felt for the small flashlight set out for just such an occasion.  With very little confidence in my knowledge of the house’s floor plan, I moved slowly without the benefit of the light lest I wake my wife.  Heading the general direction of the bedroom door, I stepped slowly and carefully hoping to avoid any trip hazards.  I could hear my wife's soft regular breathing which is always a source of calm reassurance when I find myself awake in the middle of the night.  After sliding my hands along the door surface for a moment I found the doorknob without too much exploration.  I pulled on the doorknob and could feel the door was rubbing just a little on the doorframe.  With a little more force, the door released from the frame with a small pop and opened.  I listened again to my wife’s breathing.  She seemed undisturbed and soundly asleep.

I stepped out into the tiny hallway at the top of the stairway and pulled the bedroom door closed as best I could without making more noise.  I looked over at my daughters’ bedroom door and saw that it was closed so I knew that if I turned on the hallway light it probably would not wake them, but I chose to leave the lamp off.  The nightlight at the bottom of the stairway lit my path well enough and the brighter stairway light would necessarily disturb the cozy darkness of the night.  I descended the stairs slowly and carefully.  The banister on the left side had been removed to prepare the walls for painting and the other side of the stairway is open to the main room.  The stiffness in my knees and ankles made for an added reminder to descend the stairs slowly and carefully.  Safely at the base of the stairs, I turned and walked through the main room, turned another corner, and walked into the kitchen.  Without a nightlight, the darkness in the kitchen was opaque.  The flashlight now came into use.  I wondered for a moment if the light of my little torch would be visible to any of the neighbors and if so, what would they think of a flashlight in the main house after not seeing any light in this house at night for the better part of a year or so.  I put the idea out of my head, of course, they would assume that we were staying the night.

Returning from the bathroom, I made my way back through the kitchen, turned off my flashlight, and paused for a bit in the large, open, main room of the house.  The small nightlight at the bottom of the stairway provided a dim, glow that did not quite reach across the entire length of the room.  The ceiling and corners of the room remained dark but became more visible as my eyes adjusted to the faint illumination of the tiny nightlight and the brighter moonlight outside.  

We haven’t invested in furniture yet, so the room is mostly empty except for the two wooden columns evenly spaced across the center of the room and extending from the wood plank floor to the wooden archway that divides the room into two halves.  One side has a low, barely visible, freshly painted, white ceiling.  The other has a higher, also freshly painted ceiling that was hidden in the darkness.  The wood plank floor and wood trim give the large room the feel of a dance floor in a small country/western bar, nicely swept, clean, and closed for the night.  The windows along the full length of the front of the room look out over the yard and then the lake.  The view is wonderful.  Through the windows, I see the moonlight reflecting off the lake and the long shadows of trees.  The houses around the lake are dark and nearly invisible except for random points of light that leak out from some nightlight or maybe through the closed curtains of a lit room where someone, like myself, is up in the middle of the night.  

Pausing for a few minutes, I try to take in the beauty of this moment and appreciate what I have the remarkable opportunity to experience.  I say a short prayer of gratitude for this moment and make my way back to bed.