Phillip’s Lake

[Corollary to the earlier story “Once Before”]

Phillip’s Lake 
     by That Skater Guy

I do recall a few details from another trip that I might add to the former story of a camping trip with the boys. Norman at home has a certain role to play. That role does not include domestic chores, I think. Sharon does the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, business and organizing the appearance of the house as well as the minutiae of their material peogress through this life, for the most part. I have found that each household treats the division of its labors in its own unique way. In some cases, the women do virtually nothing and the men bring home the money and change the diapers and wash the dishes and do the cooking. In other cases, the man has no visible purpose or activity in the house besides laying on the couch and watching television. Sometimes both members of the couple apply themselves equally to each labour that announces itself so that not one of them finds herself responsible for business but both do. If a fete or party has been decided to be in the offing then each of them springs into simultaneous action. In still other households neither member takes the responsibility for any of the jobs that come up and so the habitat and general real estate can be seen quickly deteriorating, unattended and unnurtured, Revenue Canada forever threateneimg, gnats and bugs of various kinds finding their way into the display of plants and also, of course, then into the food and larder. Money seems never to be available, fetes and parties either laconically or angrily considered but not brought into being, and all things orderly, clean, worthy, festive, meaningful, joyful and permanent find themselves fully and absolutely erased from this couple’s household existence. Now, Norman, on the     other hand, did have duties in his household and performed those well. What these specifically were I find myself at a loss to imagine. Whatever his domestic accomplishments at home, they were irrelevant to the performance of activities on this Phillips Lake journey.      Setting up of tents, preparing the fire for cooking, regaling the boys with stories of past adventures, deciding to replenish the firewood supply and then replenishing it, washing up dishes after eating, reminding others of agreed-on duties not performed, and other such common little expenditures of energy as any camping trip that I have ever taken has required, Norman’s skills seemed to have no connection to or place in the general melee of camping. However, this discussion of camping duties bears not at all on the whole experience the four of us participated in. We fished, we ate, we hiked, we portaged, we swam (I think), we drank a few beers (that is, the adults did), and in every way acted out the business of boyhood imagination while in the woods next to a lake. Then, when all of the above had been tested and done we packed up and, with a great deal of effort more than we had expected, paddled against wind back to the other end of Phillips lake, climbed the steep inclines that would bring us once more to the Grass River, paddled back along the way we had come and eventually got ourselves all the way to the vehicles we had left waiting for us. I don’t recall if it was sunny or cloudy, or if the wind was always up and never still or if it rained or snowed. But I do know that it, this trip, was the only one that my boys and I ever took with our good friend Norman. And that truly is a shame.