In the
rabbit hole
a monthly column
by A.C.E. Bauer
February 2006
Breathing water
and pine
There is something about the
air. As soon as you step out of the car, the smell overwhelms you. It’s a
combination of pine, earth and water in a clean, almost dust-free air. You fill
your lungs and wonder, what the heck have I been breathing until now?
Then you swat your first mosquito.
Welcome to Labelle.
The lake is about 20 km long, narrow (1.5 km at its widest), and
deep. Gouged out by gigantic glaciers, along with thousands of
others on the great Canadian Shield, it is surrounded by rolling
hills forested with a mixture of pine, maple and birch. The
winter’s ice begins to arrive in November and doesn’t leave till
the end of April. And because of its length and depth, the
lake’s waters stay cool through the hottest days of July and
August. In the spring it is home to millions of blackflies who
die out by late June only to be replaced by millions of
mosquitoes. By mid-July, the mosquitoes, too, have thinned but
they are joined by horseflies and deerflies during the day and
no-seeums at dusk. Giant dragonflies and small bats feast on
these bugs, cheered along by human witnesses.
My childhood was defined by weekends in Labelle, and long summer
weeks that stretched into months as different adults cycled
through to supervise the kids who, blissfully, thought they
could run the place. We’d arrive at the end of a long car ride,
late Friday night, after picking up fresh bread in the town
bakery, and fresh cream at Mme. Terrault’s general store. The
cream, unpasteurized and thick, would whip itself in the several
miles ride on the bumpy dirt road to our parking spot. We’d
load the boat by car headlight beam and flashlight and cross by
moonlight, starlight, and, sometimes, by boatlight alone. When
we arrived at the house, the gas lamps were lit, the kerosene
ones, too. And we’d tumble under eiderdowns till morning.
We dared each other to swim the first weekend after the ice
broke. We caught frogs by the dozens. We learned to build
fires, chop wood, drive a motor boat, start a pump. We watched
my father take apart and rebuild a 60 horsepower engine—not that
he ever got it to really work. We pulled each other on homemade
boards with a 9 horsepower outboard. We spent hours, days,
weeks, holed up in the Blackhouse reading hundreds upon hundreds
of comic books.
It’s the air, though, that has me coming back as an adult, year
after year. There are indelible smells—wood smoke, gasoline
exhaust, propane gas, calamine lotion—also associated with
Labelle. You stop noticing the air within a few minutes of your
arrival. But when it’s time to go, and you approach the car, an
acrid smell of pollution hits you, and you turn away to breathe
Labelle air—nothing is like it.
“Ici, la crasse est saine,” my Uncle Heinz proclaimed—here, dirt
is healthy. The lake water has fewer bacteria in it than the
drinking water in Montreal—despite the boats and homes that
circle the lake. Our bodies are cleaner in Labelle than
anywhere else since we spend so much time in the water.
Family come from across the world to stay—in old cabins with
windows that don’t open or shut properly, with beds that
sometimes sag in the middle. They’ve come for 50 years, despite
the lack of hot water, or electricity (although that is soon to
change), or telephone. “Ce n’est pas civilisé, ici,” the
Parisian partner of one of my cousins complained. And yes,
Labelle doesn’t fit into Old World civilization. An aunt of my
mother’s was appalled after her one visit. Why this was no
better than a pauper’s home in a shtetl. We were cooking on
wood, for goodness sakes. Yet, each sibling and cousin who grew
up there, brings their would-be spouses for a week—for the
Labelle test. Can their partner manage in a crowd of as many as
18, in two cabins and a few acres of land, where the major
activities consist of eating, sleeping, swimming, and reading on
the porch—when not dealing with at least one major plumbing or
boating problem? Can he or she leave at peace and yearning to
return? A few have failed. We don’t miss them. The air is
sweeter when you’re with people who love it, too.
One autumn day, years ago, when the sun lit up the blue sky and
the multi-colored trees on shore, when the water lapped up clear
and rippled, and when the breeze brought fresh air and a promise
of frost, my father stood on the pier with Monsieur Terrault,
one white haired and tall, a Czechoslovakian who had survived
the European war, the other shorter, dark haired, “du pays,” his
face lined and ruddied by a lifetime of outdoor labor. They
looked out onto the lake and the hills beyond. “On dirait que
c’est bon pour l’âme,” M. Terrault said. My father breathed in
and nodded. Labelle is good for the soul
