Postcards from Black Island, Canada

Some January longings for my favorite place in the summertime—rural Ontario. Part one, I'm sure.

Published January 24, 2025

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black island

I'm all about the places that make me. The places you return to, etc,. etc,. It's why I'm a travel writer specifically within my day job, and why I'm an author outside of that. Constantly seeking a "sense of place."

For me, my favorite spot in the world—or maybe just the only place I ever fully relax—is the cottage my family goes to every summer, about an hour and a half northeast of Toronto. I could write many, many love letters to that annual section of two or three weeks.

For most of my life, I've carved my summer plans (and potentially my literal year) around making it to Canada as June tips into July, even if only for a few days. I've never missed a summer.

Recently, I've been grateful that I feel connected enough to nature for it to reset me easily. I'm glad I know that about myself while young, because I can shape my life accordingly. I'm also grateful for quiet and solitude, and that sense of invisibility without isolation, which just seems easier to cultivate in the outdoors.

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While hiking Kalalau Trail on Kaua'i, I mulled over how much I prioritize "earned beauty" and how that coincides with my pursuit of awe, which is why camping might feel better to me than unfurling on a resort chair, for example (although I do love to do that too. I'm a gal of balance.)

I wrote about Black Island in my musing re: Silence: In An Age of Noise by Erling Kagge, specifically in relation to who my family might consider a "Black Islander."

I have friends who would love our spot and others who wouldn't. It's not that they wouldn't find the cottage attractive or meaningful (because I'm relatively certain the panoramic sunsets and happy hours and tan lines would appeal to just about anyone) but rather that they wouldn't quite appreciate some of the rough-around-the-edges aspects or understand why those are just as valuable to the vacation.

The quirks of hauling well water to drink and cook with, perpetually encountering and coexisting with spiders, our family's tendency to spend most days buried in books by the lakeside. Every year has its own challenges: trail maintenance, or a busted appliance, or some other headache. For that reason, the beauty of the island feels earned in a way that burrows down to the very root of me.

That first boat ride feels more justified knowing that you've just spent 26 hours in car crammed with six others and a cooler full of groceries and you still have the swollen claw marks on your thighs from where the dogs accidentally scratched you up in their scrabble to get out the door at a rest stop. (I've personally always loved and relished the feeling of the wind tangling my eyelashes on the water as you skim over its surface.)

And then there's the outdoor shower, all golden cedar. One day, when (God willing) I own a home, I need an outdoor shower like that.

There are the late sunsets. A specific genre of music. Those orange flowers. Kayaking or swimming around the island. Long walks in the country. Complete silence, unless a fishing boat zooms by. Naps on the day bed. Exploring the trails, a pup scuffing up ahead. So many small details of nature to love.

More to say on this (always), but for now—a little nostalgia. The best of everything. It is absolute paradise. Recently, I've also loved the photos of my little niece and nephew growing up on the island the same way we have in the summer, but I'm very careful about posting kiddos publicly on the Internet (and anyone who isn't explicitly okay with it.) But some favorite snaps:

ledger
visitors from the 1930s and on—in the ledger every visitor signs
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my pride and joy: actually cooking, kitchen-dancing, nowhere to be
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my great-aunt had a habit of skinny-dipping every morning and I aspire to keep up her tradition
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sunset cruise
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a pup (Clio, named for a muse of history) begging for a turkey sandwich
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shower beer, golden hour, etc,.
darts in the bar
darts in the bar
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dive on in—the water's fine
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view from a porch (& you might hear an owl or two)
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and those cozy days when it's rainy and cold and you curl up to watch a storm, cocoa in hand, maybe going out on the boat to wakeboard right before...
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name a better feeling than the thrill of waiting for the train arrival when someone you love is on it
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these front steps: the prime spot for family photos over the years, welcome drinks when someone arrives, any sunset ever...
puzzle
Someone's started a puzzle and will stay up all night the day before leaving to finish it and then be in a terrible mood on the drive because of it...not me, but we all know who it is. Wink, wink.

There are ways to make O'ahu in the current moment more like Canada in July. I'd just get up in the morning, fry myself an egg and toast, have a coffee on the porch (lanai) slowly.

In Canada: go and read three books in a day in the Adirondack by the lake. When you get hot, jump in the lake and lay out on that old trampoline. Take a lap in a kayak or on a paddleboard, maybe. Row or swim across. Stay downstairs, by the water, until the sun disappears, at which point you move to the backyard, the porch, or go for a walk in the woods.

Get very tan. Read on the daybed when we get sleepy. Curl up on a stormy day. Run or walk in the countryside, or do your circuit in the yard and collapse in the grass while a toddler tries to copy your workout.

Sing badly in the outdoor shower. Grill burgers or steak under pink sunset light with people I love. A fresh dinner, Lake-sprayed boat ride. A beer (Canadian, only) or glass of wine. Play a game or read or play darts in the bar or retire with whoever you brought or sneak out to the meadow to star-gaze (or skinny-dip.)

"Black Island" people are my people, and Black Island is my place a thousand times over. This natural beauty, this simplicity, this history. And I am very, very happy at my cabin in the middle of nowhere.

In many ways, O'ahu is and can be very similar in the same moments of contentment—which made me realize that I can capture more of them throughout the year. Why restrict these to summer? (They're still much, much better in Canada though.) I'll share more postcards or moments, but it's just something to savor.

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this year's bucket list, at the beginning (I did do many of them)

Until July.


1.

The Nature Fix by Florence Williams

2.

How to Disappear by Akiko Busch

3.

Awe by Dacher Keltner

4.

I laughed when I found an essay on this exact concept in Mary Oliver's Upstream: Essays. I never kill the spiders; I just dump them outside or leave them as is, but that doesn't mean I didn't shriek when I realized one had babies in my shower one day in the fall.

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