Rachelle and I just returned from a weekend up at our friend Douglas Mason’s cottage. Every year he throws a huge party up on Chiefs Island to celebrate his birthday, and it’s no exaggeration to say it’s an event that people look forward to all year long. Rachelle and I were probably looking forward to it more than most, as our summer zipped by in a stressful blur that’s left us dizzy and exhausted. Chiefs Island has been in the Mason family for over a century, and I’ve always thought of it as a kind of living museum. It’s beautiful, but it’s not ostentatious, having been sculpted naturally from the surrounding history and resources, rather than engineered to stand in glorious and ambitious contrast to it.
At any rate, there are usually around a hundred people up for the party and it always feels kind of magical, like you’ve just alit upon Prospero’s Island. Wearing costumes and playing games, people from all over the world come to wine, dine and dance before departing, some having become best friends, others never to see one another again. Every year there are a million different stories, and each narrative thread serves to form a kind of tapestry, one that stretches back for over a century. There’s something humbling in this.
Like anybody, I suppose, when I look out over the lake, I see a landscape that has existed long before any of us, and one that will exist long after. It provides perspective, this, reminding me that we’re small things who pass through this world in an instant. In such circumstances, vanity tends to fall away.
I have tremendous gratitude to Douglas, and the Mason family, for so generously sharing this portal with us each year. In the unhurried, almost accidental way of cottages, I get to know new and wonderful people each year. I’ve always marveled at just how interesting everybody is, how rich and varied and complex each one of our lives are, and how at the core, each person is driven by a native decency.By chance, we find time together–washing dishes after dinner. Getting drunk on the dock. Smoking a hookah pipe while sipping tea. Playing cards on a rainy day. Or just standing in the sun, staring out at the water.
Last year I stood on the dock and watched as Johnny, a man I had never met at the time, stripped down and dove into the lake. Bald and muscular, he seemed to consume the waters with each stroke, circling the island twice. He was vividly alive, this man, and I looked forward to seeing him again this year, but he was seized by a virulent cancer and died just a few months before the party.
We never know what’s awaiting us. We might think that we do, but we don’t.
There are three generations of people visible at every party, and as I move through them, I know that there are many that I won’t see again, but I sincerely treasure the opportunity to share in their light, even if it is only for a day or two. Our lives go in crazy, unpredictable directions, and the most we can hope is to somehow stay present in the lives of those we love, and to generate light, rather than consume it.